The Rule of Law Crisis in Poland: A New Chapter (original) (raw)

The rule of law crisis has been taking place in Poland since 2015 when the newly elected right-wing PiS government (Law and Justice) decided to radically restructure the justice system. The justice system reforms were initiated in December 2015 with the new law on the functioning of the Constitutional Tribunal, which after a period of controversies, also involving the European Commission and the Venice Commission, produced a constitutional Tribunal consisting of party loyalists and thus entirely disabled as an independent institution. The aim of the PiS government has been to carry out a radical exchange of political elites in key positions of the state (including the judges). The narrative for this radical change has been alleged pathologies of the Third Republic (which is a moniker to describe Poland after 1989). These pathologies are often framed by the PiS as resulting from “grey networks” of former functionaries of the communist secret services and their liberal dissidents who ...