Warsaw’s Brawling Hermeneutics

When security guards and rival factions of jurists turn the lobby of a constitutional court into a wrestling ring, one might wonder whether the rule of law was ever the actual objective. On the night of October 30, 2026, the long-running farce surrounding Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal abandoned all diplomatic pretense.

Judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska issued a one-month suspension of Tribunal President Bogdan Święczkowski and Vice-President Bartłomiej Sochański, installed herself at the helm, and marched into the building backed by officers from the State Protection Service. Scuffles ensued inside the headquarters. President Karol Nawrocki, rushing to the scene in the dead of night, denounced the maneuver as an attempted takeover of a constitutional institution and called for emergency consultations. Meanwhile, Święczkowski pledged to regain control, even as Korwin-Piotrowska scheduled a General Assembly of judges for November 3.

This spectacle is the logical culmination of a decade during which Polish politicians of every stripe have treated the legal order not as a framework for governance, but as political real estate. What began as an institutional arm-wrestle over judicial nominations has transformed into an overt struggle for physical control of the judiciary.

The origin of the decay dates back to June 2015, when the outgoing PO-PSL coalition attempted to stack the court by electing five judges just before losing power. PiS seized upon the overreach, refusing to let President Andrzej Duda swear in the legitimate appointees and substituting five of their own. By December 2016, Julia Przyłębska was installed as court president, and disputed stand-in judges took their seats, prompting a long standoff with European courts. When the European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2021 against the legality of the tribunal's composition, Warsaw responded by challenging the primacy of EU law entirely.

Donald Tusk’s government promised a return to constitutional norms after taking office in late 2023. Instead, the tactical playbook remained largely unchanged. When the Sejm elected six new judges in March 2026, President Nawrocki accepted the oaths of only two—Magdalena Bentkowska and Dariusz Szostek—rejecting Krystian Markiewicz, Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, Maciej Taborowski, and Marcin Dziurda on procedural grounds. Undeterred, the rejected judges simply took their oaths before a notary; another appointee, Maciej Berek, followed suit in parliament in October.

The Tribunal retaliated in case K 3/26, ruling that presidential presence was mandatory for a valid oath. International bodies, including the Venice Commission and the European Court of Human Rights, attempted to intervene with interim measures, asserting that presidential oversight was purely ceremonial.

The result is an institutional stalemate where every judgment is optional and every appointment depends on who commands the building security. When governments withhold the publication of rulings in the Journal of Laws and presidents refuse to swear in parliament’s appointees, the state apparatus effectively cannibalises itself. Poland's political class has successfully demonstrated that when law becomes nothing more than raw power disguised as procedure, the courtroom inevitably gives way to the brawl.

Written by Thorben Thiede thorben.thiede@alpineweekly.com