Fault Lines Episode 646: Poland's Judicial Showdown

Last week, there was quite the kerfuffle in Poland.

President Karol Nowrocki was forced to return home from a state visit to Senegal, which, you know, how many times do you get to go to Senegal? This was a big deal.

He came back because there is a crisis with the economy.

constitutional tribunal.

Note that is not the Supreme Court of Poland.

Poland also has a Supreme Court.

Basically, the simple version is constitutional tribunal reviews laws passed by the Polish lawmaking system to make sure they are in accord with the Constitution.

And the Supreme Court decides more traditional cases that come up from the lower courts.

So there's a bifurcated system.

There has been arm wrestling in Poland for going back 10 or 11 years over who is on the constitutional tribunal and the role of that institution and who gets sworn in and what is the role of the president in swearing people in to that tribunal, who gets to pick the people.

It has been criticized.

This crisis has earned Poland a lot of criticism from other European countries through multilateral judicial bodies from other democratically elected governments.

So there's kind of a gut level question here as to whether Polish political arguments over the role of the judicial branch as such Is appropriate fodder for outside criticism or is this naturally part of the Democratic experiment? I would just note, as someone who knows only a tiny bit about how our law system works, that Marbury versus Madison from 230 years ago, maybe 240 years ago, which gives our Supreme Court the right of constitutional review.

Uh, was decided by the Supreme court.

The constitutional review of laws is not actually in our constitution.

Some would say, well, it's certainly implied.

That's what the Supreme court said.

It is now accepted everywhere that the Supreme court gets to decide the constitutionality of our laws.

Uh, John Lipsy, what do you think of my hot take here on the Polish constitutional crisis?

I think

that's right.

I think you have two issues.

You can have constitutional design where you have sort of clarity on the process and procedure for how things are done, but then you might have dispute over the meaning of that.

So in this case, the president of poland has the new judges have to swear an oath before the president the president's been withholding uh their ability to do that and so um and that on that basis uh that's sort of the dispute over whether people are um appropriately on the court or not um we had a similar uh kerfuffle you might say on january 6 a few years ago and mike pence's role the vice president's role in in sort of formalizing the results of the election and whether that was ceremonial or substantive role.

Or you can have sort of ambiguities in the Constitution and what are the roles of the different branches and what should the process be to resolve them.

Last week, there was quite the kerfuffle in Poland.

President Karol Nowrocki was forced to return home from a state visit to Senegal, which, you know, how many times do you get to go to Senegal? This was a big deal.

He came back because there is a crisis with the economy.

constitutional tribunal.

Note that is not the Supreme Court of Poland.

Poland also has a Supreme Court.

Basically, the simple version is constitutional tribunal reviews laws passed by the Polish lawmaking system to make sure they are in accord with the Constitution.

And the Supreme Court decides more traditional cases that come up from the lower courts.

So there's a bifurcated system.

There has been arm wrestling in Poland for going back 10 or 11 years over who is on the constitutional tribunal and the role of that institution and who gets sworn in and what is the role of the president in swearing people in to that tribunal, who gets to pick the people.

It has been criticized.

This crisis has earned Poland a lot of criticism from other European countries through multilateral judicial bodies from other democratically elected governments.

So there's kind of a gut level question here as to whether Polish political arguments over the role of the judicial branch as such Is appropriate fodder for outside criticism or is this naturally part of the Democratic experiment? I would just note, as someone who knows only a tiny bit about how our law system works, that Marbury versus Madison from 230 years ago, maybe 240 years ago, which gives our Supreme Court the right of constitutional review.

Uh, was decided by the Supreme court.

The constitutional review of laws is not actually in our constitution.

Some would say, well, it's certainly implied.

That's what the Supreme court said.

It is now accepted everywhere that the Supreme court gets to decide the constitutionality of our laws.

Uh, John Lipsy, what do you think of my hot take here on the Polish constitutional crisis?

I think

that's right.

I think you have two issues.

You can have constitutional design where you have sort of clarity on the process and procedure for how things are done, but then you might have dispute over the meaning of that.

So in this case, the president of poland has the new judges have to swear an oath before the president the president's been withholding uh their ability to do that and so um and that on that basis uh that's sort of the dispute over whether people are um appropriately on the court or not um we had a similar uh kerfuffle you might say on january 6 a few years ago and mike pence's role the vice president's role in in sort of formalizing the results of the election and whether that was ceremonial or substantive role.

Or you can have sort of ambiguities in the Constitution and what are the roles of the different branches and what should the process be to resolve them.