Polish justices have ruled against the country's government and declared that changes to the functioning and make-up of Poland's Constitutional court are illegal.
The Constitutional Tribunal annulled new bill, passed by Poland's right-leaning government, that has prompted opposition protests and pressure from Poland's allies, including the U.S., to reverse the rules.
Under the legislation, the tribunal would need a two-thirds majority to take a decision instead of a simple majority. The quorum of judges needed in the 15-member tribunal for a decision to be valid was raised from nine to thirteen. It has also rejected court appointments made by the previous government.
The law dramatically limited the court's ability to function independently and thoroughly contravenes Poland's system and cannot be tolerated, according to the tribunal's vice-president, Stanislaw Biernat.
Chief Justice Andrzej Rzepliński told that the court found many sections of a law passed in December were "non-compliant with the Polish constitution." The law also prevented the honest and proper functioning of the constitutional court by interfering its independence and separation from other powers thus violating the principles of the rule of law, The Guardian reported.
Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło announced that the government would not be treating the tribunal's decision as valid and binding.
In a report from The New York Times, Poland's Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro voiced the response of the government which has rejected the court's opinion. He said that the actions observed in the Constitutional Court were actions of a group of judges who did not act on the basis of law and within the law, so they acted unlawfully. Hence, their ruling has no legal force, it is not binding.
It has also triggered mass street protests by tens of thousands of Poles worried about democracy in the ex-communist EU and NATO member of 38 million people, also an economic and political heavyweight in central Europe.
The battle started when the government refused to recognize three judges chosen by the previous government ahead of last October's parliamentary election, instead choosing its own candidates who have been sworn in by President Andrzej Duda but have not been permitted by the Tribunal to take their seats.
According to the leaked report of Venice Commission, an expert body of the Council of Europe, it condemned all the government's actions, finding that as long as the situation of constitutional crisis related to the Constitutional Tribunal remains unsettled and as long as the Constitutional Tribunal cannot carry out its work in an efficient manner, not only is the rule of law in danger, but so is democracy and human rights.
But Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the chairman of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party government, opposed that the report is legally absurd. It stressed that the Commission's ruling is purely advisory and does not bind the Polish government.
Mikołaj Pietrzak from the Polish Bar Council opined, "If the decision is not published in the Journal of Laws this will bring about serious legal uncertainty and in the end affect the situation of parties, citizens whose cases are being considered by public administration offices, by courts, by police, because these institutions will have to decide which law to apply."
