Tag: judicial independence

An annual report by the NGO Freedom House summarizes key developments surrounding the independence of the judiciary in 2018. Poland scored 1 out of 4 on this measure.

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki compares current judiciary reforms in Poland to legal cleansing in France after the Second World War

According to the Court of Justice’s Advocate General, Poland failed to guarantee effective legal protection by lowering the retirement age of Supreme Court judges and granting the President the discretion to prolong their mandate. The AG opinion is not binding on the ECJ, but the bench usually follows its conclusions.

The assertion presented by the media, that the sole objective of the so-called ‘great reform of the justice system’ lies in a one-off replacement of judicial personnel with a view to replace the key judicial office holders by those subordinated to the Minister of Justice is an overlyoptimistic simplification of matters. The authors of the ‘reform of the justice system’ were far more ambitious.

Through the Act of 8 December 2017 on the Supreme Court, drafted by the President of the Republic of Poland Andrzej Duda, the Law and Justice party has made radical changes in the system of judges’ disciplinary responsibility

In the annual report of the US Department of State on observance of human rights in, the American lawmakers state that during the year 2018 the Polish government continued to implement and introduce new measures related to the judiciary that drew strong criticism from some legal experts, NGOs, and international organizations. Some claim that the government’s measures limited the scope of judicial independence