Judiciary of Poland

The judiciary of Poland (Polish: władza sądownicza w Polsce) is the judicial branch of the Government of Poland, comprising all bodies with judicial powers as defined by Chapter 8 of the Constitution of Poland. The judiciary operates within the civil law legal system, as do most European countries.

The vast majority of cases are handled in the organs of the administration of justice (Polish: wymiar sprawiedliwości), which are named in the Constitution as the courts (Polish: sądy). These are subdivided into the common courts (Polish: sądy powszechne), which are the courts that have jurisdiction over all matters not specifically assigned to other judiciary organs, the administrative courts (Polish: sądy administracyjne) and the military courts (Polish: sądy wojskowe). For non-administrative matters, the Supreme Court, which is considered separate from the common courts, serves as the court of last resort, while the apex court for administrative disputes is the Supreme Administrative Court. While there is a complex system of appeal and cassation for these organs and therefore there is a limited catalogue of cases that may get accepted, everyone has a guaranteed right to appeal to a court of higher instance. Court judges in Poland are nominated by the National Council of the Judiciary (Polish: Krajowa Rada Sądownictwa) and are appointed for life by the president of Poland. They are assisted or supplemented by various other judicial officials in the court, including assessors, law clerks (asystent), registrars (referendarz) and lay judges (ławnik). Professionals such as bailiffs (komornik sądowy) and probation officers (kurator sądowy) act on the court's behalf to enforce judges' orders.

There are currently two tribunals (Polish: trybunały) operating in Poland: the Constitutional Tribunal (Polish: Trybunał Konstytucyjny) and the State Tribunal (Polish: Trybunał Stanu), which are technically not courts within the meaning of the Polish Constitution, but exercise judicial powers. The Constitutional Tribunal rules on the compliance of challenged statutes with the Constitution and is the only court in Poland with the power of striking down statutes it deems unconstitutional. The State Tribunal, which convenes very rarely, has exclusive jurisdiction over the trial of top government officials. Members of both tribunals are appointed by the Sejm, the lower house of the parliament of Poland.

The judiciary of Poland encounters numerous issues. The courts are widely seen to be too slow, and the trust in the court system is low among the general population. Changes to the judiciary carried out from 2015 by the ruling United Right coalition, ostensibly aimed at remedying these handicaps, caused much controversy and provoked an ongoing constitutional crisis. The conservative government is generally accused, in Poland as well as internationally, of trying to take control over the courts, which created a conflict between judges appointed before the Law and Justice-led coalition made changes to the judiciary and their supporters and those appointed by the new rules. The disciplinary system, widely considered to be non-independent, has in particularly drawn condemnation and led the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to order the suspension of the Disciplinary Chamber of the Supreme Court and to impose a €1-million-per-day fine since Poland did not comply with the order. The Constitutional Tribunal currently wages a legal fight against the ECJ and the European Court of Human Rights by issuing decisions aiming to thwart the application of rulings of these courts.

Structure

The scheme summarising the structure and appeal sequences of the Polish judiciary

This section describes the legal state of the structure of the judiciary as of 19 March 2022. The section does not mention extraordinary courts (sąd wyjątkowy), which theoretically may be created during war time according to article 175 section 2 of the Constitution, but they have never operated yet.

Common courts

The common courts (Polish: sądy powszechne), according to article 177 of the Constitution, are the courts of general jurisdiction, i.e. they rule on all cases in which the jurisdiction has not been explicitly transferred to other courts. This includes a broad range of cases, including civil, criminal, labour, economic and insurance law. The territorial jurisdiction of these courts and their creation is regulated by the minister of justice.

Regional court

Main article: Regional court (Poland)

The regional court (sąd rejonowy) is the trial court for the vast majority of cases. In fact, according to the Statistical Yearbook of the Republic of Poland, out of about 14,381,500 cases solved in Poland in 2020, about 13,477,800 originated in regional courts. There are currently 318 regional courts, each normally spanning several gminas; however, some large cities, like Warsaw, Kraków, Łódź, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk, Szczecin, Lublin and Katowice, are split between two or more such courts.

All regional courts have at least four divisions (wydziały): civil (cywilny), criminal (karny), family and minors (rodzinny i nieletnich) and a land registration (ksiąg wieczystych) one. In addition to that, regional courts based in the cities that at the same time host a district court or those with the rights of a powiat (county) form an economic (gospodarczy) division; most of the same regional courts will also have a labour and/or social security (pracy i ubezpieczeń społecznych) division. If a dispute (e.g. between two companies or between an employer and an employee) occurs within the jurisdiction of a regional court without the relevant chamber, the case must be tried in the nearest court that has it (as indicated by the minister of justice - this often happens to be the district court seat). Since 1 January 2020, some courts may also create an enforcement division (wydział egzekucyjny), dealing mostly with enforcing court's requests to seize assets and settle debts. 52 regional courts, all in large cities, are additionally responsible for maintaining the National Court Register (Krajowy Rejestr Sądowy), which has a list of all companies, NGOs, some government entities as well as the list of insolvent debtors.

District court

District court divisions as of 2017 (the new district court in Sosnowiec is not taken into account)

The district courts (sąd okręgowy) are above in the hierarchy of the common courts compared to the regional courts. There are currently 46 district courts centred around large cities; a 47th will appear on 1 April 2022, when a new district court in Sosnowiec is set to start adjudicating cases. Warsaw is the only city to be split into two district courts (Warsaw and Warsaw-Praga district courts). In 2020, they heard an estimated 808,600 cases.

The district court is both the court of original jurisdiction and appelate jurisdiction. As an appellate court, it hears appeals from the regional courts within its territory, usually in specially designed appellate divisions, or, in the case of smaller district courts, sections. There are also limited cases in which this court has original jurisdiction. These are:

• civil law controversies worth more than 75,000 PLN, except in cases concerning alimony, infringement on rights of possession, separation of property during divorces, corrections to land registration and those conducted using a simplified procedure of the electronic writ of payment (elektroniczne postępowanie upominawcze);
• cases about personal rights (e.g. personality rights, right to privacy, defamation and freedom of conscience cases), except for parenthood and adoption cases;
• press law matters, including the registration of media outlets, and data protection matters;
• complaints challenging the split of a cooperative;
• complaints challenging the existence, legality or legal effect of resolutions of legal persons and non-legal persons who have the rights of legal persons;
• cases seeking damages for the effects of a legally binding judicial judgment;
• cases about incapacitation of a person;
• cases requesting to recognise or abolish legal separation in a marriage;
• serious crimes, including all crimes that carry a punishment of at least 3 years of imprisonment or more (zbrodnie); and some other crimes (występki) as specified in Article 25 of the Code of criminal procedure;
• civil law cases referred from the regional court for trial in district court (may be remanded back to regional court, with justification), and criminal cases referred by the appeal court on regional court's request (may not be remanded).

The district courts will normally have a criminal, a civil, a labour and social security and an economic division; some will additionally have an inspection division (wydział wizytacyjny) tasked with monitoring the activity of lower courts; a penitentiary division for cases related to prisons, an execution division with similar roles to regional court's enforcement division and so on according to the court's needs as determined by the minister of justice. Five courts, in Gdańsk, Katowice, Lublin, Poznań and Warsaw, have special intellectual property divisions, with the most complicated IP processed in the Warsaw district court. The Warsaw district court is also the only district court adjudicating on competition law complaints and is the court responsible for maintaining the register of political parties.

Appeal court

Appeal court division as of 2017

There are 11 appeal courts (sąd apelacyjny), which, as the name suggests, primarily function in appellate jurisdiction. They hear appeals from rulings made by the district court in its original jurisdiction; additionally, they hear requests to cancel a decision of a Polish arbitration court (article 1208 of the Code of civil procedure) and hear appeals from disciplinary commissions of some self-governing regulated professions (including, but not limited to, university professors, bailiffs, sworn translators and architects). Three divisions are created within these courts: the criminal division, the labour and social security division, and the civil division, which rules in civil, family and economic law matters. An inspection chamber may be also created to control the courts within the appeal court's jurisdiction (known in Polish as apelacja, not to be mistaken for the same word meaning an appeal).

The appeal court, in the only function as a court of original jurisdiction, normally serves as a disciplinary court of the first instance for common court justices, with the exception of the cases mentioned in the Disciplinary Chamber section.

In its administrative role, the court is tasked with making a budget of all the courts subordinate to itself and control the expenditures of the district and regional courts.

Military courts

The military courts generally have jurisdiction over criminal matters concerning the Polish Armed Forces and its civilian personnel, as well as of crimes of foreign soldiers and their personnel during their duties if the treaties allow them to be tried on Polish soil. There are seven garrison military courts (wojskowy sąd garnizonowy) under the jurisdiction of two district military courts (wojskowy sąd okręgowy), which roughly correspond to the regional and district common courts, respectively. The creation of military courts and their territorial jurisdiction are regulated by the minister of defence, while the minister of justice makes internal regulations for the court.

Most of the court-martials begin in garrison military courts, whose ruling may be appealed in the district military court. Exceptions to this rule include:

• offences committed by officers of the rank of major or senior;
• crimes that would have been prosecuted in the district court in civilian settings;
• offences committed by foreign soldiers and foreign civilian personnel of the armed forces,

which are tried in the district military courts and may be appealed to the Supreme Court.

View on the façade of the Supreme Court. The building also houses the State Tribunal

Supreme Court

Main article: Supreme Court of Poland

The Supreme Court (Sąd Najwyższy) is the highest court for decisions proceeded in common and military courts, but is not part of either. Like in some other European countries, the Supreme Court, in the majority of its competences, serves as a court of cassation, hearing cases after they have already been decided by the court of second instance (from district courts if the case originated in a regional court, or from appeal courts if the trial happened in district court). Appeals are possible either by selected public officials (skarga nadzwyczajna, extraordinary appeal), or via the Public Prosecutor General/Ombudsman or Children Ombudsman in cases of judgments concerning children ("extraordinary" cassation), or via cassation on request of the party ("ordinary" cassation), or, in criminal cases, by lodging an appeal of appellate court judgment. Only extraordinary cassations may be entered in any case; other methods of appeal/cassation have limitations, and some cases may not be subject to cassation. Among other duties, the Supreme Court reviews all complaints about parliamentary, European Parliament and presidential elections as well as referendums and certifies the validity of these and strikes down resolutions of the self-governing organs of lawyers, attorneys at law and notaries it deems unlawful.

The Supreme Court is led by the First President of the Supreme Court, who is also ex officio the President of the State Tribunal and a member of the National Council of the Judiciary. It is divided by law into five chambers (izby) headed by the Presidents of the Supreme Court: the Civil Chamber reviews civil, economic and family law cases; the Criminal Chamber rules on criminal matters, including on all appeals and cassations from the military courts; the Chamber of Extraordinary Control and Public Affairs makes decisions about electoral complaints and certifies elections and referendums, while also ruling on some narrow areas of law (e.g. competition cases) and hearing complaints about technical issues of judgements (lack of independence of judges, case being decided too slowly etc.). The Disciplinary Chamber hears disciplinary cases (both on appeal and on trial) and decides about labour relations of the Supreme Court judges, while the Labour and Social Security chamber issue rulings on labour law for all other people.

The Supreme Court has been embroiled into numerous controversies since the Law and Justice (PiS) party launched an overhaul of the court in 2017 and stuffed it with nominees from the partisan-controlled National Council of the Judiciary. The Disciplinary Chamber, for instance, despite being ordered to be suspended by the European Court of Justice, continues operations, but is considered to be dismantled by the governing coalition.

This complex houses two of the most important administrative courts: the Supreme Administrative Court (left) and the Voivodeship Administrative Court in Warsaw (right)

Administrative courts

Further information: Voivodeship administrative court and Supreme Administrative Court of Poland

Before a party can seek redress in administrative courts, the challenged decision must be final (i.e. either upheld on appeal to a higher administrative body or not allowed by law to appeal). The bodies to which the decision must be appealed are mentioned in statutes - as an example, the National Appeals Chamber is a specially created organ to review decisions about the results of some tenders. If still unsatisfied, the party, in brings suit in one of the 16 voivodeship administrative courts (wojewódzki sąd administracyjny, WSA). These may be divided internally into several divisions.

A cassation (see Supreme Court) may be brought in limited circumstances to the Supreme Administrative Court (Naczelny Sąd Administracyjny, NSA), which is the court of last resort for administrative law matters. It is also the court that resolves jurisdiction disputes between organs of local government, between local government boards of appeal and between these institutions and those of the central government. Disciplinary proceedings against administrative judges, both on trial and on appeal, also happen in NSA. This court, headed by the President of the Supreme Administrative Court, is divided into three chambers: Finance (finansowa), which resolves tax-related issues, Commerce (gospodarcza), which deals with issues related to financial instruments and corporate law, while the General Administration (ogólnoadministracyjna) chamber deals with issues not covered by the other two chambers.

Constitutional Tribunal

Constitutional Tribunal of Poland

Main article: Constitutional Tribunal (Poland)

The Constitutional Tribunal (Trybunał Konstytucyjny) is a court dealing with constitutional law, similar to those existing in many European countries. It is commonly considered the Poland's topmost court, but technically it isn't a court but rather a tribunal. It does not normally review court cases on their merits, but rather rules on the constitutionality of laws that are: sent by the President after the parliament passed them to check compliance with the Constitution, asked to be reviewed by the Public Prosecutor General or the Ombudsman on their request, by the National Council of the Judiciary insofar as it related to the independence of the judiciary, or by a party in the case that exhausted all other legal remedies (skarga konstytucyjna), in which case the complaint must challenge the constitutionality of the law on which the unfavourable decision was handed down, rather than relitigate the case. Should the Constitutional Tribunal find the law non-compliant with the Constitution, it has the power to strike it down.

Additional duties of the Tribunal include deciding whether a political party's purpose violates the Constitution, rule on the jurisdiction disputes of central government organs mentioned in the Constitution, and declaring the President incapable of performing their duties if they were not able to tell it to the Marshal of the Sejm. According to article 190 of the Constitution, all of the Tribunal's decisions are non-reviewable and binding.

State Tribunal

Main article: State Tribunal (Poland)

The State Tribunal (Trybunał Stanu) is a special judicial organ with exclusive jurisdiction over trials of the highest political offices of Poland in cases defined by the Constitution, namely (among active ones): the President, the Prime Minister, ministers, the President of the National Bank of Poland, the President of the Supreme Audit Office, members of the National Broadcasting Council (KRRiT), and legislators. The President may only be tried by the State Tribunal for their crimes; ministers are tried for all abuses of office and breaking the laws and the Constitution, other high executive officers are tried for breaking the laws and the Constitution, while legislators are only tried there for profiting from, or buying the property of central or local governments using their businesses. The State Tribunal holds both trials and appeals, though these are heard by different panels of State Tribunal judges. The decisions of the Tribunal cannot be appealed to other bodies and may not be annulled by pardon.

In practice, the State Tribunal is used very rarely, it only convening three times since 1982, when it was created in its current iteration. Only two people were convicted by the State Tribunal. Due to the rarity of its operation, doubts have been raised about whether this system of the accountability of politicians is effective.

Proceedings

Poland is one of the countries whose law is based on the civil law legal system. As is often the case with civil law countries, the proceedings, even though they have some characteristics of the adversarial system, are predominantly grounded in the inquisitorial system. The judges are supposed to take an active part in investigating the facts of the case, particularly in criminal law cases, and pre-trial proceedings are extensive. The common feature of all judicial proceedings in Poland is that any party to the case is guaranteed the right to appeal (zasada dwuinstancyjności), as specified in article 176 of the Constitution. The venues of appeal vary greatly depending on the trial court, as specified in the relevant section.

Poland does not operate on binding precedent and Polish courts do not create law by issuing their rulings (wyrok), instead relying on whatever statutes are in force, but the rulings of the Supreme Court (SN) and of the Supreme Administrative Court (NSA) are widely followed in their respective domains of law. In particular cases, their decisions may bind the lower courts, however. For example, if the court of the second instance requests guidance from the Supreme Court about laws that it struggles to apply, the decision of the SN legally binds the court but only in the case in which the court asked for guidance. Additionally, the Supreme Court may issue internal legal rules (zasady prawne), which are approved by at least 7 judges, about the interpretation of statutes that bind other SN judges in issuing their judgments. In administrative courts, these internal legal rules bind both the Supreme Administrative Court and the voivodeship administrative courts, and any changes to the rules by the lower court must be referred to a 7-member group of the NSA. Notably, though, the Constitutional Tribunal's judgments "have universal legal force" and are interpreted by Jackowski to be approximately at the same place in the hierarchy of laws as the statutes; that said, the reasons for judgment are not considered to be binding.

Judges may additionally request legal guidance from the Constitutional Tribunal, according to article 193 of the Constitution, and may send a preliminary reference to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in European Union law matters, which was even the case for the Constitutional Tribunal itself. Answers to both requests are binding on the court which sent the reference. As Poland is a member of the Council of Europe, citizens may appeal to the European Court of Human Rights after exhausting all legal remedies in Poland, and the decision will bind the Polish courts in the particular case.

The rules of proceedings and evidence, along with detailed roles of each party and court official, are outlined in the Code of Civil Procedure (Polish: kodeks postępowania cywilnego), the Code of Administrative Procedure (Polish: kodeks postępowania administracyjnego), the Petty Offences Code of Procedure (Polish: kodeks postępowania w sprawach o wykroczenia) and the Code of Criminal Procedure (Polish: kodeks postępowania karnego).

Personnel

National Council of the Judiciary (KRS)

Further information: National Council of the Judiciary (Poland)

Article 187 of the Constitution assigns the following proportions to the composition of members: one member appointed by the President of Poland, four MPs from the Sejm, two Senators, and fifteen court judges, chosen among the Supreme Court judges and members of the three parts of the judiciary (common courts, administrative courts, and military courts). The First President of the Supreme Court, the President of the Supreme Administrative Court and the Minister of Justice are given their seats ex officio. Prior to 2018, National Council of the Judiciary Act apportioned the fifteen judges into quotas: the 2011 law mandated two Supreme Court judges, two appeal court judges, eight district court judges, two administrative court judges, and one military court judge, while before that, district courts chose one more member at the expense of administrative courts. The requirement for strict apportionment has since been abolished.

Also before 2018, all of the judges were chosen by the judges themselves, as has been the custom; however, the Sejm has since been granted the power to appoint the members among the judiciary by a simple majority vote, thereby effectively granting control over the KRS to whomever happens to have the majority in the lower house of the Polish parliament, which was the Law and Justice party at the time the law went into force.

Appointment of judges

Courts

The National Council of the Judiciary does not issue rulings or orders as the judicial organs normally do, however, it plays a key role in appointment of all judges of the courts as the Constitution of Poland defines them. According to Article 179 of the Constitution, the KRS is the only organ with the authority of recommending candidates for judges of all courts; it also nominates assessors, who eventually may become judges. According to the current law, decisions of the National Council of the Judiciary are appealable to the Supreme Court, with the exception of cases where the candidate seeks nomination to the Supreme Court, in which case there is no legal recourse, though the ECJ found the lack of possibility to contest this decision to be likely running afoul of the European Union law. In practice, despite the theoretical possibility that the people with appropriate experience in practicing law may get to the bench in higher courts, the vast majority of recommendations by the National Council of the Judiciary for positions in non-trial courts has been from already serving judges. The KRS then forwards a list of candidates it recommends to the President.

According to the Constitution, the President, after hearing the oath of the new judges appoints them for life, though all judges must retire by the age of 65 or 70 (see table above). There is no timeframe within which the President must publish their decision. Whether the President may legally override the decision of the National Council of the Judiciary to nominate a candidate for judicial office is a subject of scholarly dispute, with some contending that the intended role for the President is purely ceremonial and thus he may not do that, and others saying that the decision is a prerogative of the President and therefore he is not bound by anything in his decision. In practice, there were instances where the President refused to appoint recommended judges, but it is very rare: according to a 2017 analysis, there have been only 20 cases out of more than 5,000 that the President refused to appoint judges proposed by the KRS to the head of state. In 2022, another 11 judges, who have been nominated before 2018 by the KRS, were denied appointments to the courts. In case law, the administrative courts have repeatedly found lack of jurisdiction when dealing with cases reviewing the decisions of the President about the appointment of judges, and the Constitutional Tribunal ruled consistently that these decisions are not subject to judicial review. The Constitutional Tribunal asserted in a controversial decision in K 3/21 that the European Union law does not allow the courts to control the legality of appointments of the President or the legality of decisions of the National Council of the Judiciary, either, as this would be unconstitutional.

Tribunals

See also: 2015 Polish Constitutional Tribunal crisis

The tribunals, unlike the courts, are not under the purview of the National Council of the Judiciary. Article 194 of the Constitution of Poland says that the Constitutional Tribunal members are chosen for a nine-year non-renewable term by a simple majority of the Sejm members, who then take an oath in front of the President. Whether the Sejm could appoint judges to the Tribunal in advance to take office after its session was to expire but before the new was set to begin (or after the beginning of the new session), and whether the Sejm may invalidate its own decision to appoint Constitutional Tribunal judges, was the issue of the political crisis in 2015.

The members of the State Tribunal are also chosen by the majority of the Sejm. It has 19 members, of which the First President of the Supreme Court, who is ex officio President of the State Tribunal, two vice-presidents and 16 other members, who serve in the Tribunal for the term of the parliament that appointed them.

Other judicial workers

Apart from judges, the other people authorised to make verdicts are assessors (Polish: asesor), who only appear in regional courts - not be mistaken with law clerks (Polish: asystent sądowy), who also serve on the court but do not issue rulings and instead only give advice to judges - and lay judges (Polish: ławnicy, singular: ławnik). All students who have gone through 36 months of judicial apprenticeship and who have passed the judicial exam may become assessors. They share the same rights and responsibilities as other judges and may issue rulings and orders in the majority of cases. Exceptions include orders to detain a suspect during pre-trial proceedings, review of a decision to decline to take up the case or discontinue it, and family law matters. The institution briefly disappeared from the Polish legal system as the previous regulations about assessors were found by the Constitutional Tribunal and the European Court of Human Rights not to be guaranteeing enough judicial independence. Lay judges adjudicate cases together with normal judges in some family and labour law cases, as well as when investigating serious crimes (zbrodnie, see relevant section for the definition), but their role and number has diminished somewhat over years, and their service is limited by law to 12 days per year, with only exceptional extensions.

Registrars, also known as court division officials or court referendaries (Polish: referendarz) are a relatively recent addition to the courts, them being first introduced in 1998. It is a person responsible for administrative matters of the judicial procedure and rulings (such as payment orders and enforcement of legal orders). In common courts, it is also normally the person who heads the land registration chamber of the court or that of the economic law chamber insofar as it relates to liens. The person may also serve as a judge in bankruptcy cases and is the officer who is in charge of electronic writs of payment cases. The registrar has also got some competences in criminal cases - for instance, the officer may reroute a potential criminal case to voluntary mediation, may decide to provide legal aid to a party upon its request and hears witnesses remotely. In administrative courts, the referendarz, in addition to administrative duties as described above, is a mediation officer by default.

In certain cases, the courts may appoint special officers to execute their court decision. For example, probation officers (Polish: kurator sądowy) are employees of the court that assist it in resocialisation efforts and perform certain other activities. Bailiffs (Polish: komornik sądowy), while not employees of the court, execute orders that aim to settle debts on behalf of the court.

Remuneration

The number of staff of each categories, the base salary as determined by law and the actual mean salary for some jobs are given in the table below.

Number and salaries of judicial workers of the court

Type of employee	Count, full-time equivalent	Baseline salary by law (multipliers of the mean monthly salary, unless otherwise noted)	Mean monthly salary (PLN), full-time equivalent, in 2020
Court judges	Up to 9,651
regional court	6,003	2.05-2.50, depending on work experience	14,350.79
district court	2,546	2.36-2.92, depending on work experience	17,821.58
appeal court	417	2.75-3.23, depending on work experience	20,938.39
Supreme Court	97	4.13; 4.7495 after serving for 7 years in the court Add 1.2 for the First President of the Supreme Court, 1.0 for the President of the Supreme Court (head of a chamber), 0.7 for leaders of sections (divisions of chamber), and 0.5 for their deputies	N/A
garrison military court	Up to 38	According to their military rank but not less than a regional court judge	N/A
district military court	Up to 20	According to their military rank but not less than a district court judge	N/A
voivodeship administrative courts	430	As an appeal court judge	N/A
Supreme Administrative Court	100	As in the Supreme Court	N/A
Assessors	433	1.64 (80% of the basic salary of a judge)	9,825.68
Law clerks	3,816	4,000-5,500 PLN in common courts; in administrative courts, 2,930-6,830 PLN for law clerks, 2,930-7,950 PLN for senior law clerks.	5,428.12
Registrars	2,436	1.5375-1.71 for registrars, 1.8445-1.938 for senior registrars, depending on length of work	11,416.13
Probation officers	4,979	Anchored at 1,667.60 PLN in 2003 and increased every year according to indices issued by the government for public sector workers	8,136.07
Lay judges	9,186	5.412% of the mean monthly salary for every day of service 0.66% of the mean monthly salary in per diem	N/A
Constitutional Tribunal judges	15	5 5.8 for the Vice-President, 6.2 for the President of the Constitutional Tribunal	N/A
State Tribunal judges	19	10% of the mean monthly salary for every day of service + per diem	0 PLN - did not convene in 2020
Note. 1. All court officers receive work bonuses, with an incremental increase of 1 percentage point each year until they have worked for more than 20 years in the judiciary (setting at a maximum of 20%). In the Supreme Court and the Supreme Administrative Court, there is no minimal time after which the bonus kicks in, while in other courts, 5 years must pass. The officers of the court may be eligible for other bonuses, as determined by law. 2. The salary is calculated using the mean salary of the second quarter of the year preceding the current year times the multipliers as given above. For example, in 2020, the mean salary of Q2 2019 is taken, which was 4,839.24 PLN (for 2022, the baseline is 5,504.52 PLN). The mean salary in 2020, for reference, was 5,226.00 PLN.

Minimal requirements

Several laws as well as the Constitution set the criteria which the candidates must meet in order to serve in the judicial branch of the Polish government. The common requirement of all judges is that they must be Polish citizens of "flawless character" and must enjoy full civil rights; in addition to that, the Constitution bars political party and trade union members to join the judiciary, and forbids performing public activities that may undermine the independence of the judge or the courts. All statutes relevant to the justice organs forbid prospective judges from being a central government employee or a member of parliament; only State Tribunal members may work in local government organs. Professors and habilitated doctors of law at a Polish tertiary education facility may seek nomination to any of the judicial positions (assessors as well as judges), provided they also fill criteria unrelated to necessary experience. When appointed, however, the judges are immune from legal persecution and non-removable unless by a decision of a court. Some of the criteria, not mentioned in this paragraph, are summarised in the table below.

Criteria to become a judge

Criteria	Common courts			Military courts	Administrative courts		Supreme Court	Constitutional Tribunal	State Tribunal
	Regional	District	Appeal		Voivodeship (WSA)	Supreme (NSA)
Multiple citizenship	No				Allowed		No	Must fulfil all criteria to serve in the Supreme Court or the Supreme Administrative Court	Allowed
Criminal record	Must not have been convicted of an intentional crime prosecuted by the state prosecutor or of a deliberate tax fraud Candidates born before 1 August 1972 must produce a statement about their involvement (or lack thereof) with the Communist state security and military intelligence authorities			Must not have been convicted of an intentional crime prosecuted by the state prosecutor or of deliberate tax fraud	No formal requirement (however, the candidate must still have a "flawless character")		Must not have been convicted of an intentional crime prosecuted by the state prosecutor or of a deliberate tax fraud; this includes suspended sentences for the above crimes If born before 1 August 1972, they could not have been engaged with the Communist state security and military intelligence authorities		Must not have been convicted by a court of a crime
Age bracket (years)	29-65 (70)				35-65 (70)	40-65	40-65		N/A (see also Necessary experience entry)
Necessary experience	Must have at least a master's degree in law recognised in Poland Must pass a judicial or a prosecutorial exam and work for 3 years as an assessor or be a judge of other courts or work as a prosecutor or as a counsel for the General Counsel to the Republic of Poland (PGRP) or practice law for at least 3 years	Has been a regional court judge, a garrison (trial) military court judge or a prosecutor for 4 years or was a judge of a district military court or of an administrative court or practiced law or worked for the PGRP for 6 years	Has been a judge, a prosecutor, practiced law, or worked for the PGRP for 10 years	As in regional court. Candidates for judges are enlisted in active military service and must pass an officer exam to begin judicial duties.	Must have at least a master's degree in law recognised in Poland Has been a judge, a prosecutor, practiced law, or worked for the PGRP for 8 years or has been a civil service worker tasked with applying or creating administrative law for 10 years or has worked as an assessor for the WSA for 2 years	Has been a judge, a prosecutor, practiced law, or worked for the PGRP for 10 years			The Vice-Presidents of the State Tribunal, and at least half of its members must meet requirements for becoming a judge

Criteria for other judicial workers

Criteria	Assessor		Law clerk		Registrar		Probation officer	Lay judge
	Common courts	Administrative courts	Common courts	Administrative courts	Common courts	Administrative courts
Multiple citizenship	No	Allowed
Criminal record	Common courts: Must not have been convicted of an intentional crime prosecuted by the state prosecutor or of a deliberate tax fraud Administrative courts: no formal requirement	No formal requirement
Age bracket (years)	No lowermost age	At least 30 years old	At least 24 years old	No lowermost age	At least 24 years old	No lowermost age		30-70
Necessary experience	Must have at least a master's degree in law recognised in Poland, go through three years of apprenticeship and pass a judicial or prosecutorial exam	Must have at least a master's degree in law recognised in Poland, work as a judge, prosecutor, counsel for the PGRP, or practised law for at least 4 years or has been a civil service worker tasked with applying or creating administrative law for 6 years	Must have at least a master's degree in law recognised in Poland		Must have at least a master's degree in law recognised in Poland, and pass one of the six exams: for registrars, for judges, for prosecutors, for notaries, for lawyers or for attorneys at law; or pass an apprenticeship for judges or prosecutors	Must have at least a master's degree in law recognised in Poland and have 3 years of experience as a civil service worker tasked with applying or creating administrative law	Must have at least a master's degree in psychology, pedagogy, sociology, or law, go through an apprenticeship for probation officers and pass an exam (this requirement may exceptionally be waived by the minister of justice)	Must finish full secondary school To be a judge in labour law cases, the person must know labour rights
Note. To be a lay judge, the person must be employed, have a business or live in the area in which they are a candidate for at least one year, and get elected by the residents of the gmina from which they want to be a lay judge. At the same time, this person cannot be a judge, a prosecutor, a member of an organisation whose decision may serve as a basis of litigation, a member of law enforcement agencies, a lawyer, an active-duty soldier, a member of the clergy, or a gmina, powiat or voivodeship council member.

Issues

Length of proceedings

The Polish court system, particularly the common courts, is considered to be slow. In 2017, depending on the region, the time required for the case to go through the trial instance was 4-8 months on average, with longer proceedings largely in courts centred around larger cities; about 10% of cases required more than a year for that (with as much as 18.72% in Warsaw) and more than 1% of cases needed more than 3 years (of which almost 4% in Warsaw). On the European level, Poland has slower proceedings in the highest courts, and has in general slower processing of civil cases than the median, but the criminal cases and the voivodeship administrative courts are often quicker than the median among the Council of Europe members. This problem is also noted by the World Justice Project, where the lowest grade assigned to Poland was for timeliness of civil proceedings, which not only was behind other European countries but also much below the world average score (in criminal proceedings, the situation was still assessed as somewhat worse compared to its peers but much better than in civil cases), and by the United States Department of State. In 2013, the Centre for Public Opinion Research (CBOS), a state-run pollster, found that by far the most common complaint about the Polish justice system was the length of court proceedings. The average tempo of processing all cases in the first instance (disposition time) has slowed over recent years and is now about the average of EU countries as of 2019.

The problem with the length of proceedings has been recognised by both Polish and international courts. According to the statistics provided by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), from the time since Poland joined the Council of Europe in November 1991, out of 1,027 judgments that found Poland guilty of breaches of the European Convention on Human Rights, the biggest share of them - 445 judgments - concerned excessively lengthy proceedings. The ECHR ruled in 2015 in Rutkowski et al. v. Poland that Poland offered inadequate protections for parties who suffer from long court proceedings, some of which have been dragged for years, despite a law, itself created after as a result of another ECHR case, theoretically aiming to address the problem. The Constitutional Tribunal wrote in the reasonings of a 2011 case that a civil lawsuit was "expensive and long", and the vice-minister of justice said the same in 2014. The length of proceedings caused cases such as the murder of Grzegorz Przemyk by Communist authorities in 1983 to be closed inconclusively as the indictments went past the prescriptive period.

According to a 2020 survey of Polish lawyers and attorneys at law, 95.8% of these professionals said that the excessive length of proceedings has a systemic character; these problems occur both on the judicial and the prosecutorial side. Excessive caseloads (over 14 million cases per year for fewer than 10,000 judges, which yields almost 4 cases per day on average), overbroad spectrum of cases under the purview of the courts, delays in requesting and delivering opinions of expert witnesses, faulty work organisation and an excess of managerial positions distracting from adjudication of cases, among other reasons, are said to be the reasons for such delays. At the same time, most lawyers were afraid to make complaints about inadequate speed of processing the case for fear of angering the judge, and only 12% believed that this tool was effective. According to a November 2021 poll by Rzeczpospolita, 54% of respondents did not believe that the proceeded reforms of the judiciary would speed up proceedings.

Lack of popular support and trust

The trust in the judicial system among the general population is low. A large slump in the trust in the court system happened in 1998-2007, as the people did not see the court system as an impartial arbiter of the cases, which Krystyna Daniel connected to the general distrust of statutes and government organs, lengthy proceedings and media criticism (mostly about controversial court cases or irregularities in the judiciary). A particular plunge in support for the courts occurred in 2012, when numerous irregularities were found in the functioning of the courts in Gdańsk as they were investigating the insolvency of Amber Gold, a pyramid scheme company.

Only 32% approved of the current state of the judiciary, compared with 41% of negative voices, according a poll made by CBOS. The support for the courts has been oscillating around 30% since around 2009, with relatively little variation across party preferences but less support among the right-leaning electorate. In December 2021, the same pollster found that 46% of people preferred to resolve cases informally by non-judicial means, which number steadily increased since the 2014 and approached values experienced in the communist Polish People's Republic, and that only 38% declared that the judiciary was better equipped to do that. The 2021 rule of law report notes that only 29% of the general population has a good opinion of the court system, but only 18% of companies surveyed approved of Polish judiciary, and the numbers were steadily decreasing. Recent changes to the courts, introduced successively since 2015 by PiS, did not seem to improve the perception of them - according to a December 2021 poll for Rzeczpospolita, over 69% of people thought that they did not increase confidence in the courts.

Other issues

Some of the Polish courts have seen signs of nepotism, e.g. favouritism during competition for judge positions and in salaries. These problems have also plagued the National Council of the Judiciary, which prompted the Supreme Court to annul some of its recommendations. Some other issues of concern are the usage of the so-called evidence-mining custody, a dubious practice whereby a suspect is detained for a repeatedly prolonged period of time not to make sure the course of the proceeding is correct but rather to compel them to testify against other defendants, and the excessive reliance on the letter of the law (lex) rather than the law itself (ius). The Polish courts have also been severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, in particular as related to the access to the justice system. The pandemic also forced the courts to increasingly digitise its so far underused and inconsistently applied computer systems aiding decisionmaking, documentation and hearings; however, many documents are still being processed on paper and sent by post.

Rule of law concerns

Main article: Polish constitutional crisis

A series of late 2010s reforms to the Polish judiciary have proved controversial. They met in particular with the disapproval of the European Union authorities, which initiated Article 7 proceedings against a member state for the first time. The rule-of-law crisis in Hungary and Poland served as a trigger for adopting the EU's conditionality mechanism, which tied the receipt of EU budget funds to the proper observance of rule of law, and led to a suspension of Next Generation EU funds allocated for Poland. The European Parliament has repeatedly pressed the European Commission to act on the breaches of the independence of the judiciary, and even sued it in court for what it said was inadequate response to the violations.

Capture of the Constitutional Tribunal

See also: 2015 Polish Constitutional Tribunal crisis

The Constitutional Tribunal (TK), like other courts with appointments made by political bodies, experienced some form of bias in rulings, but it was not much different from the situtation in the analogical institutions in other countries. Since 2015, however, the TK has been stuffed with appointees favourable to the currently ruling party, including former politicians of the Law and Justice party or friends of its leaders, leading scholars to see it as a captured judicial institution subservient to the Law and Justice government. Due to the irregularities in appointments to the Tribunal in 2015, the ECHR ruled that the Tribunal, when ruling with the so-called doubling judges (sędziowie-dublerzy) instead of those whose term started before the term of the 2015-2019 parliament was set to constitute, violated the right to free trial as it was an improperly constituted court.

The Constitutional Tribunal then delivered rulings aiming to insulate the justice system from ECHR scrutiny, first by issuing a ruling arguing that the ECHR had no jurisdiction to control the appointment of its own justices by asserting it was not a court within the meaning of the European Convention on Human Rights (described by Ewa Łętowska and Wojciech Tumidalski to be the Tribunal's "coming out") and then by expanding the ruling on the court system as a whole. It also did the same with the treaties of the European Union by stating that the treaties are incompatible with the Polish Constitution insofar as they allowed the courts to question the appointments by partisan-controlled KRS or the President, aiming to thwart effects of ECJ's unfavourable judgments about the Polish judiciary and forcing it not to comply with ECJ's orders. This ruling sparked massive protests and raised concerns about Polexit. The European Commission has charged the Constitutional Tribunal with violations of EU law while issuing its verdicts.

Undue influence on judges

Further information: Polish judicial disciplinary panel law

The problem of undue influence of judges in Poland has existed for some time. A sting operation by Gazeta Polska Codziennie that triggered a political scandal in 2012 found that Gdańsk courts were very flexible to demands of whomever presented themselves as a senior officer of the government, which was the Chancellery of the Prime Minister in that particular case. The judge, Ryszard Milewski, was disciplined for that violation and sent to a Białystok court.

Since the reform of common courts and the Supreme Court started in 2017, the judges almost unanimously expressed concern about worsening judicial independence, fearing retribution for criticism of the new laws. Some of the most vocal opponents of the changes to the judiciary were targeted by the state prosecution, and disciplinary proceedings were abused in an attempt to silence critics, who e.g. sent preliminary requests to the European Court of Justice asking to assess judicial independence. There were also cases of judges being submitted to disciplinary action after issuing a ruling opposite to the party's interest or demands of the prosecutor in the particular case. In addition to that, the changes to the statutes regulating courts made it an offence to question the validity of appointments of judges by fellow judges, in essence those appointed by a partisan-controlled National Council of the Judiciary, even if there were legitimate concerns about them (often called the "muzzle law"). This statute was criticised by the Venice Commission for violating the judicial independence and severly limiting the judges' freedom of speech. The 2021 rule of law report by the European Commission said that the mere prospect of being prosecuted in a judicial body having no guarantees of independence had created a chilling effect for judges. Rzeczpospolita also reported that the catalogue of offences after which disciplinary proceedings are initiated broadens, some of which are not related to the functioning of the court, like speeding and driving under the influence.

Partisan control of the National Council of the Judiciary

A particularly controversial change was the creation of a disciplinary chamber of the Supreme Court, whose members are all nominated by the new iteration of the KRS. While the Constitutional Tribunal ruled in 2019 that an arrangement in which 15 judges were appointed by the Sejm, thus making the body partisan-controlled, was legal, it proved very controversial. In September and October 2018, the Supreme Administrative Court ordered a halt on Council's appointments to the Supreme Court to three of the five chambers, but the President ignored the NSA's order. The top administrative court later annulled around a dozen recommendations for appointment of new judges of the Supreme Court due to concerns about the lack of independence of the Council. The Venice Commission urged not to approve the politicisation of the KRS, while numerous scholars, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) questioned the independence or the constitutionality and thus the validity of nominations made by the partisan-controlled KRS (sometimes called the neo-KRS). Due to the lack of impartiality, the National Council of the Judiciary was expelled from the European Network of Judiciary Councils.

Given the doubts about the validity of the new KRS as well as other laws concerning the common courts and the judiciary, several courts have made preliminary requests to the ECJ about the overhaul of the judiciary or issued rulings aiming to resist the changes. The Supreme Court declared the two new chambers, the Disciplinary and that of Extraordinary Control and Public Affairs, were illegal. While this was promptly overturned by the Constitutional Tribunal, arguing that European law was not above the Polish Constitution, the consensus of scholars was that the Tribunal exceeded its competences as it could not assess the constitutionality of the Supreme Court's resolutions. The EU top court ruled that the lowering the retirement age to 65 (thus removing about 40% of the Supreme Court members), with tying the prolongation of justices to the President's consent, was illegal in light of the European Union law. The ECJ also delivered a judgment ordering the suspension of the Disciplinary Chamber, saying it has deep concern over this key element of the justice system overhaul. After the court's ruling had been ignored for more than a year, the ECJ applied unprecedented penalties of €1 million per day for ignoring the ECJ's decision.

In addition to that, several judges and lawyers sued in the ECHR to declare the Supreme Court chambers with the controlling majority being appointed by the new body incompatible with the European Convention of Human Rights, and thus invalidate its rulings. The Strasbourg court agreed, declaring the Disciplinary Chamber, the Chamber of Extraordinary Control and Public Affairs and the Civil Chamber not to be properly established courts within the meaning of Article 6 of the Convention.

Arbitrary secondment of judges

The minister of justice, according to law, may second (delegować) a judge to a lower or, in some circumstances, to the higher courts and to the Ministry of Justice; the minister may also second a judge to administrative courts, the Chancellery of the President, to the Supreme Court or to an institution subordinate to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs upon the requests of the leaders of these agencies; however, the law does not require that the decisions of secondment, or the revocation thereof, have justifications. The European Court of Justice ruled that the system of purely arbitrary delegation of judges, where the minister of justice is at the same time the top prosecutor, violates European Union law; the Polish Ombudsman also argued that the unlimited powers in issuing delegations ran afoul of several articles of the Constitution, including by infringing on the President's prerogative to appoint judges to the positions they decide.

This "Konstytucja" (Constitution) graphic with highlighted "TY" (you) and "JA" (I) became a rallying cry for opponents of Law and Justice's changes to the judiciary

Repercussions in Poland and abroad

Further information: Protests against Polish judiciary reforms

The judicial reforms have been met with fierce resistance from the judiciary, including the rank-and-file judges. For example, the Polish Advocacy, Palestra (lawyers' and trainee lawyers' organisations) and Lawyers' High Council do not recognise the judgments of the suspended disciplinary chamber of the Supreme Court. Numerous protests were started against the reforms. They were also initiated abroad in front of Polish diplomatic institutions.

The rule of law crisis has prompted several courts to temporarily cease honouring the European Arrest Warrants from Poland, including courts in the Netherlands, Germany, Ireland, Slovakia and Spain. However, the ECJ ruled that the courts may not do so unless there are reasonable doubts about the possibility of getting a fair trial in Poland.

See also

• Law in Poland
• Law enforcement in Poland
• Lawyers in Poland

Notes

 This article incorporates text by the European Commission available under the CC BY 4.0 license.

External links

• Portal of court cases by the Ministry of Justice and cases decided by the Constitutional Tribunal in Polish (selected judgments in English)
• The 2021 EU Justice Scoreboard, the Polish country profile on the Council of Europe's graphics and on the World Justice Project for international comparisons
• Rule of law reports by the European Commission and the Stefan Batory Foundation (in English)
• A report by the Ministry of Justice (2019) about the efficiency of Polish courts (in Polish)
• ruleoflaw.pl - Documentation on the rule of law in Poland in English
• Verfassungsblog - occasional information about the legal events in Poland in English