Poland purges over 1/3 of its Supreme Court

[Mystic Warriors]

"Looks at the President"


Call me skeptical.

Skeptics are going to be categorized as enemies of the state in many countries formerly known as proper democracies before 2030. The goddamn People's Republic of China might look more liberal in comparison by then!

Skepticism prevents fascism.

[Kubumba Tribe]

a paradigm shift away from a post-national, centralized, secular government of the EU, to a nationalist, de-centralized, Christian based, very right wing model. The EU exceeded it's mandate, and tried to force a "one size fits all" government run from Brussels, that no one voted for, and without the consent of the people. I think Quit-Italy is next, and the break up of the EU is not very far away. This is the failure of those who supported the European push into globalism, the policies they made, and the rule they created without the will or consent of the people of Europe.

Jihad meets McWorld.

[Western Vale Confederacy]

"Every person that doesn't agree with me is a fascist!"

Despite being a centrist and having a bone or two to pick with the Right, but the Left just seemingly enjoys making a laughing stock out of itself.

"I'm a centrist but the Left fucking sucks lol"

Its shit like this that makes me internalize "centrist" as "basically on the right but in denial."

Both sides have good points and bad points, but at the very f*cking least the right tends to be more subtle in its partisan politics (albeit it doesn't take a sturdy shovel to dig down and expose their true intentions) and to not showcase itself as a living breathing farce, or at least that's what my silent analyzing of both sides seem to show me.

Also, since I get told by the right that I'm "basically on the left but in denial", and now a leftist is telling me that I'm "basically on the right, but in denial"...

I guess that confirms that I am indeed a centrist since both sides cancel eachother out with their finger pointing...or that both sides (particularly anybody that isn't a moderate) is a hassle to compromise with.

[Hurdergaryp]

Skeptics are going to be categorized as enemies of the state in many countries formerly known as proper democracies before 2030. The goddamn People's Republic of China might look more liberal in comparison by then!

Skepticism prevents fascism.

We can only hope, but I remain skeptic.

[Erdogan in cool sunglasses]

Looks like Poland is on track to become another Hungary where the independence of the courts will be gutted , free press and assembly is limited and elections are rigged to where its impossible for the incumbent party to lose. Its really upsetting to see democracy on the retreat worldwide. I think its very possible it might no longer exist in many countries in a few decades.

The only press limiting were done under the previous government when they tried to use police to prohibit week magazine "Wprost" publish embarrassing recordings of the ruling politicians. The recordings were published despite that and that was the one of reasons of their fall.

Today freedom press is going down not because of legislation (none was changed for years) but because of
a) the fact that the society is getting polarized along with media. That's why often attacks on journalists made by party supporters (on both, ruling and opposition sides) happen more often.
b) the report about press freedom is done by "domestic experts". The list of the experts for Poland was revealed by one of the right-wing magazines. There were almost journalists who are strongly against the government and it's nearly certain that they tried to use the reports to punish the country for "choosing wrong" in the election.

[Shrillland]

I'd be happy if the law simply ended with a forced retirement at 65. Supreme court figures have a tendency to turn into something of perpetual Ayatollahs otherwise and taking measures to avoid a judicial gerontocracy would be welcomed.

Well, there are plenty of countries that do that, even Canada sets its age at 70. My problem isn't with lowering the retirement age per se, it's with the fact that most of those affected are being deliberately targeted because of their decisions against PiS policies.

[Soviet-mongol]

From the NY Times: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/poland-purges-supreme-court-and-protesters-take-to-streets/ar-AAzxZBi?li=BBnbfcL

WARSAW — Poland’s government carried out a sweeping purge of the Supreme Court on Tuesday night, eroding the judiciary’s independence, escalating a confrontation with the European Union over the rule of law and further dividing this nation. Tens of thousands took to the streets in protest.

Poland was once a beacon for countries struggling to escape the yoke of the Soviet Union and embrace Western democracy. But it is now in league with neighboring nations, like Hungary, whose leaders have turned to authoritarian means to tighten their grip on power, presenting a grave challenge to a European Union already grappling with nationalist, populist and anti-immigrant movements.

The forced retirements of up to 27 of 72 Supreme Court justices, including the top judge, and the creation of a judicial disciplinary chamber were the latest in a series of steps by Poland’s right-wing Law and Justice Party to take over the justice system.

For years, the party has demonized judges as unreconstructed Communists and obstructionists. After coming to power in 2015, it took control of the Constitutional Tribunal, which is tasked with ensuring that laws do not violate the Constitution, and gave authority over the country’s prosecutors to the Ministry of Justice. Most recently, it asserted new powers to select judges. In recent days, judges who have spoken out against the changes have reported being harassed and intimidated.

Each move has been greeted with international condemnation and angry demonstrations.

Hours before the purge took effect at midnight, Poles again took to the streets in more than 60 cities and towns around the country. As the sun set in Warsaw, crowds gathered in front of a memorial dedicated to those who died in the city’s 1944 uprising against Nazi Germany, chanting an old but familiar refrain: “Solidarnosc.”

But now, calls for solidarity were not directed at an occupying force — or at Communist rule, which the labor-backed Solidarity movement brought down in 1989 — but at a democratically elected government, albeit one the demonstrators fear is undermining the system they fought so hard to build.

“We are here because of the destruction of the judiciary in Poland,” said Kamila Wrzesinska, who stood amid a sea of Polish and European Union flags. Organizers passed out placards with one word: “Constitution.”

In an interview just days ago, the leader of the Supreme Court, Malgorzata Gersdorf, expressed deep concern about her country’s direction.

“I don’t want to say that I am terrified,” she said, “but without a doubt this is not a direction I would like to go in, nor support, as I think it destroys what has been built over the last 25 years.”

The new law passed by Parliament requires that judges retire when they turn 65 unless they appeal to the country’s president, Andrzej Duda, who has sole discretion over whether they can remain.

Justice Gersdorf, who is 65, and more than a dozen others have refused to make such appeals, saying that the law itself was unconstitutional. Their supporters say the law was aimed at certain judges and had little to do with age, an argument that was bolstered when the government named Justice Gersdorf’s replacement: the 66-year-old judge Jozef Iwulski.

Justice Gersdorf, following through on a vow she had made, showed up for work with other justices Wednesday morning, setting the stage for a possible confrontation with the authorities.

Officials with the governing party say they are simply overhauling a corrupt system that obstructs popular will. But critics, both in Poland and abroad, contend they are building one in which the courts are subservient to politicians.

In his zeal to create what he calls a Fourth Republic, free of any vestige of Communist rule and vest the state with ever greater power, the party’s leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, has also set the nation on a collision course with the European Union. The bloc views the changes as a threat to the rule of law and the Western values at the heart of the treaty binding the union of nations.

But the European Union’s failure to curb Hungary’s drift toward authoritarianism has emboldened other leaders in the region, where right-wing nationalism and populism are on the rise. Right-wing governments have taken power recently in Austria and Italy, while Chancellor Angela Merkel, a guardian of liberal Western values, just agreed to build camps on Germany’s borders to process migrants.

If Poland is not made to pay a high price for its actions, critics and outside legal experts worry, currents unraveling democracy in member states will be further strengthened.

It is far from clear how much more the European Union can do. For the first time in its history, it has turned to the so-called nuclear option, invoking Article 7 of its founding treaty. Poland could lose its voting rights as part of that process, although that would require a unanimous vote by the 28 member nations — a highly unlikely result, considering its strong backing from other countries that have moved in an authoritarian direction.

European officials also announced on Monday that a so-called infringement procedure had been started against Poland, which could result in the matter being referred to the European Court of Justice. The court could declare the judicial overhaul unconstitutional, but it cannot stop it.

For now, many of the country’s 10,000 judges remain united in their opposition to the government’s measures. And counter-pressures are building in Poland’s vibrant civil society.

Lech Walesa, who led the Solidarity movement that ended Communist rule in Poland and then served as president from 1990 to 1995, vowed on Sunday to lead a campaign of civil disobedience if Justice Gersdorf and other judges were removed.

“I am saying a definite ‘enough’ to this,” he wrote on Facebook. “If they raise their paws against the Supreme Court, then I am going to Warsaw.”

Judges who have spoken out publicly against the purge have reported being threatened, harassed and intimidated.

Waldemar Zurek, a former spokesman for the National Council of the Judiciary and a district court judge in the city of Krakow, has been openly critical of the changes. In response, he says, both he and his family have been subject to intense pressure and abuse, including death threats.

Judge Zurek said he was dismissed as a spokesman for the courts, threatened with disciplinary sanctions over fabricated allegations, and harassed by government agents, including at his home. His financial records were improperly disclosed, he has faced what he calls a trumped-up investigations about a long-ago real-estate transaction, and he has gotten scores of threatening emails and letters.

“All those who stand in the way of the minister become public enemies,” he said. “They are spat on.”

Justice Gersdorf, whose title is first president of the Supreme Court, said she thought that the mandatory retirement age was set with her in mind. Backed by 63 other judges on the court, who voted last week that she should stay in office, Justice Gersdorf said that she would continue to show up for work.

“I have no intention of resigning, since my term of office is six years,” she said.

Such defiance is the latest and most high-profile development in a confrontation that has been building for months.

In December, the Venice Commission, which is responsible for monitoring rule of law for the European Union, expressed “grave concerns” that the judicial overhaul put “at serious risk the independence of all parts of the Polish judiciary.”

Poland was given until the end of June to make changes that would satisfy those concerns. But no agreement was reached in meetings last week in Luxembourg, and Polish leaders vowed to press ahead.

“In essence, this is the end,” Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Thursday after meeting with European leaders. “We do not intend to withdraw from this reform.”

Mr. Kaczynski, the governing party’s leader, has not hidden his intentions.

“In a democracy, the sovereign is the people, their representative in Parliament and, in the Polish case, the elected president,” he said in a 2016 speech. “If we are to have a democratic state of law, no state authority, including the Constitutional Tribunal, can disregard legislation.”

Lacking the two-thirds majority needed in Parliament to change the Constitution, the party instead took control of the tribunal. After that, the tribunal approved laws, like those restructuring the courts, that critics have called unconstitutional.

The party then gave the Minister of Justice the role of prosecutor general, which had previously been independent, and it took over the National Council of the Judiciary, which is responsible for appointing judges.

Parliament also created a new disciplinary chamber that the opposition says would be used to attack judges who displeased the party.

“Judges in this disciplinary chamber will be earning 40 percent more than the justices on the Supreme Court,” Justice Gersdorf said. “It has to be emphasized that this is political bribery.”

One of Poland’s great accomplishments after 1989 was restoring public faith in the courts, she said, but it “will require years of rebuilding” to undo the damage being done to that achievement.

She shrugged off concerns that she might have to pay a high price for her defiance.

“They are not putting people in jail yet,” she said.

Basically, 27 of the 72 justices(including the 1st president of the court) in Poland's Supreme Court have been fired by the PiS government, ostensibly because they're over 65, but in reality because they're opposed to the consolidation of power in the increasingly authoritarian state. Poland is also establishing a judicial disciplinary chamber to punish judges for "misconduct". 1st President of the Court Malgorzata Gersdorf showed up to work today, ready to force a showdown. The EU is considering imposing Article 7 of the Maastricht Treaty....but that requires a unanimous vote, which the rest of the Visegrad Group won't let happen.

So, NSG, do you think Poland is on its way to become another Hungary or even Russia(without the conquests)?

At this rate, I would have to say yes. Illiberal democracy is on the rise in Eastern Europe, more so than in the west or in North America, and nothing can stop it because people like Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who still runs the country from behind the scenes, simply don't care.

All of thoose judges were working in the communist period. Thoose judges do not understand the concept of human rights so it is better they were sacked and replaced by new who were brought up in the democratic period.

[Nettunia]

I've been following this Polish government for some time. Everyone talks about Hungary probably cause it's the loudest, but real nuts are here.

[Hurdergaryp]

I've been following this Polish government for some time. Everyone talks about Hungary probably cause it's the loudest, but real nuts are here.

Given the religious signature of both countries, old-fashioned Roman Catholic antidemocratic sentiments seem to be a part of the problem.

[Soviet-mongol]

I've been following this Polish government for some time. Everyone talks about Hungary probably cause it's the loudest, but real nuts are here.

Given the religious signature of both countries, old-fashioned Roman Catholic antidemocratic sentiments seem to be a part of the problem.

Yeah, but it is their culture. If they dont wish to be liberal and multicultural than nobody should force them. Especially as Poland and Hungary have no history of opressing people of color or colonialism.

[Nettunia]

Let's not forget these are the same guys that tried to rewrite the history of the holocaust.

[Hurdergaryp]

Given the religious signature of both countries, old-fashioned Roman Catholic antidemocratic sentiments seem to be a part of the problem.

Yeah, but it is their culture. If they dont wish to be liberal and multicultural than nobody should force them. Especially as Poland and Hungary have no history of opressing people of color or colonialism.

The population of a country tends not to be a homogenous hive mind, much to the chagrin of authoritarian leaders.

[Soviet-mongol]

Yeah, but it is their culture. If they dont wish to be liberal and multicultural than nobody should force them. Especially as Poland and Hungary have no history of opressing people of color or colonialism.

The population of a country tends not to be a homogenous hive mind, much to the chagrin of authoritarian leaders.

I am not sure. Over half of Hungarians voted for Orban in the last elections, and so did the Polish. I am also sure most Poles and Hungarians does not wish diversity in their countries.

[Ethel mermania]

Let's not forget these are the same guys that tried to rewrite the history of the holocaust.

Tbf to the poles, they didn't not participate in the holocaust with the gleeful abandon as say the Ukrainians. There was no polish government building Nazi death camps. As the nazi's were taking that territory for their own usage.

[Erdogan in cool sunglasses]

I'd be happy if the law simply ended with a forced retirement at 65. Supreme court figures have a tendency to turn into something of perpetual Ayatollahs otherwise and taking measures to avoid a judicial gerontocracy would be welcomed.

Well, there are plenty of countries that do that, even Canada sets its age at 70. My problem isn't with lowering the retirement age per se, it's with the fact that most of those affected are being deliberately targeted because of their decisions against PiS policies.

Because they pretend to act like Ayatollahs. Did you read the opinion about that law about Supreme Court written by them? I did. They say that the law is unconstitutional (they don't have a right to evaluate the constitutionality of laws) because Supreme Court is not like every court mentioned in Constitution and the paragraph which says that the cadency of the judges can be shortened after the court system is changed is not about the Supreme Court judges. Following that interpretation and the article of th Constitution saying that"judicial rule over Poland belongs to courts and tribunals" (without mentioning the Supreme Court alone as the judges want) the Supreme Court isn't a part of judicial system or even more doesn't exist which is obvious absurd. That shows they don't have clean intentions here but just manipulate the society.

[Erdogan in cool sunglasses]

Let's not forget these are the same guys that tried to rewrite the history of the holocaust.

Tbf to the poles, they didn't not participate in the holocaust with the gleeful abandon as say the Ukrainians. There was no polish government building Nazi death camps. As the nazi's were taking that territory for their own usage.

The thing is much more complicated here. There are a few things worth to mention when you think about Polish people participation in the Holocaust.
a) Poland was the only occupied country where was death penalty for helping Jews.
b) pre-war Poland had a large population of mixed Polish-German descent. These people often wanted to collaborate with Germans and become full Germans to avoid extermination. They probably participated in Holocaust.
c) Polish government in exile installed death penalty on collaborators with Germans (like above) but was often unable to do it but always tried.
That's why we oppose the whole Polish Holocaust thing. Yes, there were people of Polish descent who participated in it but they were seen as traitors of the Polish nation so blaming blaming the nation is just bad.

[Shrillland]

From the NY Times: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/poland-purges-supreme-court-and-protesters-take-to-streets/ar-AAzxZBi?li=BBnbfcL

WARSAW — Poland’s government carried out a sweeping purge of the Supreme Court on Tuesday night, eroding the judiciary’s independence, escalating a confrontation with the European Union over the rule of law and further dividing this nation. Tens of thousands took to the streets in protest.

Poland was once a beacon for countries struggling to escape the yoke of the Soviet Union and embrace Western democracy. But it is now in league with neighboring nations, like Hungary, whose leaders have turned to authoritarian means to tighten their grip on power, presenting a grave challenge to a European Union already grappling with nationalist, populist and anti-immigrant movements.

The forced retirements of up to 27 of 72 Supreme Court justices, including the top judge, and the creation of a judicial disciplinary chamber were the latest in a series of steps by Poland’s right-wing Law and Justice Party to take over the justice system.

For years, the party has demonized judges as unreconstructed Communists and obstructionists. After coming to power in 2015, it took control of the Constitutional Tribunal, which is tasked with ensuring that laws do not violate the Constitution, and gave authority over the country’s prosecutors to the Ministry of Justice. Most recently, it asserted new powers to select judges. In recent days, judges who have spoken out against the changes have reported being harassed and intimidated.

Each move has been greeted with international condemnation and angry demonstrations.

Hours before the purge took effect at midnight, Poles again took to the streets in more than 60 cities and towns around the country. As the sun set in Warsaw, crowds gathered in front of a memorial dedicated to those who died in the city’s 1944 uprising against Nazi Germany, chanting an old but familiar refrain: “Solidarnosc.”

But now, calls for solidarity were not directed at an occupying force — or at Communist rule, which the labor-backed Solidarity movement brought down in 1989 — but at a democratically elected government, albeit one the demonstrators fear is undermining the system they fought so hard to build.

“We are here because of the destruction of the judiciary in Poland,” said Kamila Wrzesinska, who stood amid a sea of Polish and European Union flags. Organizers passed out placards with one word: “Constitution.”

In an interview just days ago, the leader of the Supreme Court, Malgorzata Gersdorf, expressed deep concern about her country’s direction.

“I don’t want to say that I am terrified,” she said, “but without a doubt this is not a direction I would like to go in, nor support, as I think it destroys what has been built over the last 25 years.”

The new law passed by Parliament requires that judges retire when they turn 65 unless they appeal to the country’s president, Andrzej Duda, who has sole discretion over whether they can remain.

Justice Gersdorf, who is 65, and more than a dozen others have refused to make such appeals, saying that the law itself was unconstitutional. Their supporters say the law was aimed at certain judges and had little to do with age, an argument that was bolstered when the government named Justice Gersdorf’s replacement: the 66-year-old judge Jozef Iwulski.

Justice Gersdorf, following through on a vow she had made, showed up for work with other justices Wednesday morning, setting the stage for a possible confrontation with the authorities.

Officials with the governing party say they are simply overhauling a corrupt system that obstructs popular will. But critics, both in Poland and abroad, contend they are building one in which the courts are subservient to politicians.

In his zeal to create what he calls a Fourth Republic, free of any vestige of Communist rule and vest the state with ever greater power, the party’s leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, has also set the nation on a collision course with the European Union. The bloc views the changes as a threat to the rule of law and the Western values at the heart of the treaty binding the union of nations.

But the European Union’s failure to curb Hungary’s drift toward authoritarianism has emboldened other leaders in the region, where right-wing nationalism and populism are on the rise. Right-wing governments have taken power recently in Austria and Italy, while Chancellor Angela Merkel, a guardian of liberal Western values, just agreed to build camps on Germany’s borders to process migrants.

If Poland is not made to pay a high price for its actions, critics and outside legal experts worry, currents unraveling democracy in member states will be further strengthened.

It is far from clear how much more the European Union can do. For the first time in its history, it has turned to the so-called nuclear option, invoking Article 7 of its founding treaty. Poland could lose its voting rights as part of that process, although that would require a unanimous vote by the 28 member nations — a highly unlikely result, considering its strong backing from other countries that have moved in an authoritarian direction.

European officials also announced on Monday that a so-called infringement procedure had been started against Poland, which could result in the matter being referred to the European Court of Justice. The court could declare the judicial overhaul unconstitutional, but it cannot stop it.

For now, many of the country’s 10,000 judges remain united in their opposition to the government’s measures. And counter-pressures are building in Poland’s vibrant civil society.

Lech Walesa, who led the Solidarity movement that ended Communist rule in Poland and then served as president from 1990 to 1995, vowed on Sunday to lead a campaign of civil disobedience if Justice Gersdorf and other judges were removed.

“I am saying a definite ‘enough’ to this,” he wrote on Facebook. “If they raise their paws against the Supreme Court, then I am going to Warsaw.”

Judges who have spoken out publicly against the purge have reported being threatened, harassed and intimidated.

Waldemar Zurek, a former spokesman for the National Council of the Judiciary and a district court judge in the city of Krakow, has been openly critical of the changes. In response, he says, both he and his family have been subject to intense pressure and abuse, including death threats.

Judge Zurek said he was dismissed as a spokesman for the courts, threatened with disciplinary sanctions over fabricated allegations, and harassed by government agents, including at his home. His financial records were improperly disclosed, he has faced what he calls a trumped-up investigations about a long-ago real-estate transaction, and he has gotten scores of threatening emails and letters.

“All those who stand in the way of the minister become public enemies,” he said. “They are spat on.”

Justice Gersdorf, whose title is first president of the Supreme Court, said she thought that the mandatory retirement age was set with her in mind. Backed by 63 other judges on the court, who voted last week that she should stay in office, Justice Gersdorf said that she would continue to show up for work.

“I have no intention of resigning, since my term of office is six years,” she said.

Such defiance is the latest and most high-profile development in a confrontation that has been building for months.

In December, the Venice Commission, which is responsible for monitoring rule of law for the European Union, expressed “grave concerns” that the judicial overhaul put “at serious risk the independence of all parts of the Polish judiciary.”

Poland was given until the end of June to make changes that would satisfy those concerns. But no agreement was reached in meetings last week in Luxembourg, and Polish leaders vowed to press ahead.

“In essence, this is the end,” Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Thursday after meeting with European leaders. “We do not intend to withdraw from this reform.”

Mr. Kaczynski, the governing party’s leader, has not hidden his intentions.

“In a democracy, the sovereign is the people, their representative in Parliament and, in the Polish case, the elected president,” he said in a 2016 speech. “If we are to have a democratic state of law, no state authority, including the Constitutional Tribunal, can disregard legislation.”

Lacking the two-thirds majority needed in Parliament to change the Constitution, the party instead took control of the tribunal. After that, the tribunal approved laws, like those restructuring the courts, that critics have called unconstitutional.

The party then gave the Minister of Justice the role of prosecutor general, which had previously been independent, and it took over the National Council of the Judiciary, which is responsible for appointing judges.

Parliament also created a new disciplinary chamber that the opposition says would be used to attack judges who displeased the party.

“Judges in this disciplinary chamber will be earning 40 percent more than the justices on the Supreme Court,” Justice Gersdorf said. “It has to be emphasized that this is political bribery.”

One of Poland’s great accomplishments after 1989 was restoring public faith in the courts, she said, but it “will require years of rebuilding” to undo the damage being done to that achievement.

She shrugged off concerns that she might have to pay a high price for her defiance.

“They are not putting people in jail yet,” she said.

Basically, 27 of the 72 justices(including the 1st president of the court) in Poland's Supreme Court have been fired by the PiS government, ostensibly because they're over 65, but in reality because they're opposed to the consolidation of power in the increasingly authoritarian state. Poland is also establishing a judicial disciplinary chamber to punish judges for "misconduct". 1st President of the Court Malgorzata Gersdorf showed up to work today, ready to force a showdown. The EU is considering imposing Article 7 of the Maastricht Treaty....but that requires a unanimous vote, which the rest of the Visegrad Group won't let happen.

So, NSG, do you think Poland is on its way to become another Hungary or even Russia(without the conquests)?

At this rate, I would have to say yes. Illiberal democracy is on the rise in Eastern Europe, more so than in the west or in North America, and nothing can stop it because people like Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who still runs the country from behind the scenes, simply don't care.

All of thoose judges were working in the communist period. Thoose judges do not understand the concept of human rights so it is better they were sacked and replaced by new who were brought up in the democratic period.

That would be the case except that they will be replaced exclusively by justices supportive of Morawiecki and PiS. And when you stack a court to that extent, your motives usually aren't good ones.

Because they pretend to act like Ayatollahs. Did you read the opinion about that law about Supreme Court written by them? I did. They say that the law is unconstitutional (they don't have a right to evaluate the constitutionality of laws) because Supreme Court is not like every court mentioned in Constitution and the paragraph which says that the cadency of the judges can be shortened after the court system is changed is not about the Supreme Court judges. Following that interpretation and the article of the Constitution saying that"judicial rule over Poland belongs to courts and tribunals" (without mentioning the Supreme Court alone as the judges want) the Supreme Court isn't a part of judicial system or even more doesn't exist which is obvious absurd. That shows they don't have clean intentions here but just manipulate the society.

Here, I'll actually concede the point to you. The Supreme Court trying to act like the Constitutional Tribunal is going a little too far. Personally, I'd merge the two courts together, but that's just me. Though I also disagree with how Morawiecki gamed the system in the Tribunal back in 2015 as well.

[Erdogan in cool sunglasses]

All of thoose judges were working in the communist period. Thoose judges do not understand the concept of human rights so it is better they were sacked and replaced by new who were brought up in the democratic period.

That would be the case except that they will be replaced exclusively by justices supportive of Morawiecki and PiS. And when you stack a court to that extent, your motives usually aren't good ones.

Still even if judge is a little bit supportive for PiS it doesn't mean he/she will follow them blindly because he/she is still an independent judge. Also it seems hard to imagine that PiS will find 27 judges who are their supporters. All what they can find is at least sympathetic neutrality but it would be also hard.

Because they pretend to act like Ayatollahs. Did you read the opinion about that law about Supreme Court written by them? I did. They say that the law is unconstitutional (they don't have a right to evaluate the constitutionality of laws) because Supreme Court is not like every court mentioned in Constitution and the paragraph which says that the cadency of the judges can be shortened after the court system is changed is not about the Supreme Court judges. Following that interpretation and the article of the Constitution saying that"judicial rule over Poland belongs to courts and tribunals" (without mentioning the Supreme Court alone as the judges want) the Supreme Court isn't a part of judicial system or even more doesn't exist which is obvious absurd. That shows they don't have clean intentions here but just manipulate the society.

Here, I'll actually concede the point to you. The Supreme Court trying to act like the Constitutional Tribunal is going a little too far. Personally, I'd merge the two courts together, but that's just me. Though I also disagree with how Morawiecki gamed the system in the Tribunal back in 2015 as well.

It wasn't Morawiecki, it was Szydło... the fact is all the names can be replaced simply with Jarosław Kaczyński.

But again, the deal with Constitutional Tribunal was highly unconstitutional and from current perspective unneccessary. At least today PiS would gain the majority in CT despite these moves. But again what they did was predicted by the previous government when PO chose two constitutional judges despite they hadn't a right to do this. And the law which allow them to do that was done in cooperation with former CT chairman, Andrzej Rzepliński. For PiS it was the signal that CT under Rzepliński can be used as a tool to prevent PiS from doing... almost everything. Rzepliński stated for example that the 500+ program (500 zł for the second and the next children) is unconstitutional and if only CT will be able to procede this law (which didn't happen) he force the government to abolish it. On the other hand CT under Rzepliński legitimated obviously unconstitutional laws like changes in retirements where the state took private money from private retirement accounts to the public retirement system to show the EU they have smaller debt than in reality is.

[Puldania]

Poland is becoming an increasingly shitty state.

[Communist Zombie Horde]

TIME AND EDUCATION ARE THE ONLY THINGS THAT CAN STOP THE SPREAD OF FASCISM! THE RIGHT WILL PREVAIL!!!

[Shrillland]

Well, yes, I was trying to be nice to an extent not putting Kaczynski's name up there. My mistake with the other though..I'll admit that one. As for the rest, we'll see how it goes I suppose.

[Chan Island]

TIME AND EDUCATION ARE THE ONLY THINGS THAT CAN STOP THE SPREAD OF FASCISM! THE RIGHT WILL PREVAIL!!!

Those... are fairly contradictory statements.

[The of Japan]

TIME AND EDUCATION ARE THE ONLY THINGS THAT CAN STOP THE SPREAD OF FASCISM! THE RIGHT WILL PREVAIL!!!

Those... are fairly contradictory statements.

is fascism that conservative, from the examples of it implemented in history?

[Risottia]

Poland is becoming an increasingly shitty state.

Fifth partition time.

[Bears Armed]

Sorry, I'm stuck on the fact that Poland has 72 sitting Supreme Court justices...

Back before the Partitions, in the 17th & 18th century, getting a law passed by their national legislature (which was called the Sejm) required the unanimous consent of all the nation's nobles...