Police Takeover of Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal: Anatomy of a Coup

1. Background and timeline

Since March 2024 the Prime Minister has refused to publish judgments of the Constitutional Tribunal (CT) in the Journal of Laws, although Article 190 of the Constitution makes them universally binding and final and requires their immediate publication. The practice was later formalised by a Council of Ministers resolution of December 2024.

Three seats fell vacant in December 2024 and a fourth in April 2025, yet the Sejm made no election for more than a year – contrary to the CT’s own case law (K 34/15), under which a vacancy must be filled by the Sejm of the term in which it arises and may never serve as a political strategy. After two further seats fell vacant in December 2025, the Sejm, on 13 March 2026, elected six judges at once – unprecedented under the current Constitution, which requires judges to be elected individually (Article 194(1)) – and did so despite irregularities: the committee’s favourable opinion on a rival candidate (M. Skwarzyński) was never presented to the plenary.

Under Article 4(1) of the 2016 Act on the Status of CT Judges, an elected person takes the oath before the President of the Republic; only then is the service relationship established (Article 5). On 1 April 2026 President Karol Nawrocki swore in two of the six (D. Szostek and M. Bentkowska), filling the two seats vacated during his own term and thus restoring the number of judges needed for a full bench (eleven; in July he also swore in S. Patyra, elected in June). He withheld the oath from the other four (K. Markiewicz, M. Dziurda, M. Taborowski and A. Korwin-Piotrowska), pointing out that the Sejm had not specified which seat each person was to fill or when each term began, and had left the President’s enquiries on these points unanswered.

On 4 September 2026 the Sejm also elected Maciej Berek, who until August 2026 was a minister in Donald Tusk’s government and whom the Prime Minister called his “right-hand man”. It is doubtful whether he meets the statutory requirement of ten years’ practice as a legal adviser (radca prawny); the President made the oath conditional on documents proving this, which were never supplied.

The four persons elected in March took a substitute “oath” at a ceremony in the Sejm on 9 April 2026, organised by the Speaker of the Sejm, Włodzimierz Czarzasty; Mr Berek did the same on 14 October 2026. None of them took the oath before the President, yet all five have since demanded to be admitted to adjudicate. The President of the CT, Bogdan Święczkowski, refused, pointing out that in law they are not judges and he simply cannot admit them. In a letter received by the CT on 26 October the President’s Chancellery stated that Mr Berek’s Sejm ceremony was not an oath before the President; under Article 5 of the Status Act he has thus not entered into service.

On Friday, 30 October 2026, at the request of Ms Korwin-Piotrowska, who alleged a threat to the life and health of judges, riot police cordoned off the CT in the late afternoon; the Tribunal’s guards were ordered to leave, and, according to the CT’s spokesperson, seven persons elected by the Sejm in 2026 entered the building escorted by State Protection Service officers. Shortly after 18:00 an “order” posted on the CT’s website declared Ms Korwin-Piotrowska acting head of the Tribunal and “suspended” its President and Vice-President, Bartłomiej Sochański, for one month, while the CT’s official account reported that the website had been unlawfully taken over. That same evening the Prosecutor General – who is simultaneously the Minister of Justice – filed five motions to lift the immunity of Mr Święczkowski and Mr Sochański, and the police prevented the President of the CT from entering the premises.

The President of the Republic cut short a state visit to Senegal and, at around 1:00 a.m. on 31 October, accompanied by the First President of the Supreme Court, entered the CT after being physically obstructed at the door. He stated that “the constitutional order of the Republic of Poland was violated and a constitutional state body was taken over by force”. Ms Korwin-Piotrowska meanwhile barred the President and Vice-President from the building, made other judges’ access dependent on her summons, suspended the CT’s staff and registry, and announced the convening of a General Assembly of judges for 3 November.

2. Legal situation

The measures taken against the lawful leadership of the CT – the “suspension” of its President and Vice-President, their exclusion from the building, the takeover of the website and the convening of a General Assembly that is to draw a disciplinary panel against them – are unlawful on three independent grounds.

1. The provision invoked does not apply to the CT. The “suspension” relies on Article 130 of the Act on the System of Common Courts, reached through a double cross-reference (Article 19 of the Status Act refers to the Supreme Court Act, whose Article 10 § 1 refers to the common courts act). Article 19, however, refers only to the rights and obligations of Supreme Court judges in matters not regulated by the Status Act, whereas the disciplinary liability of CT judges is regulated exhaustively there (Articles 24–29), with the CT itself acting as disciplinary court and the President of the CT drawing its panels. That Act contains no power to suspend a CT judge, let alone the President of the CT, who is appointed by the President of the Republic (Article 194(2) of the Constitution). Furthermore, Article 130 is an instrument of supervision over ordinary courts, entrusted to a court president or the Minister of Justice, and therefore cannot be transposed to a constitutional court whose judges are subject only to the Constitution (Article 195(1)).
2. Even if it applied, its conditions are not met. Article 130 permits immediate removal only where a judge is caught in the act of an intentional offence or where, owing to the nature of the act, the authority of the court requires immediate removal. The order cites no offence, but merely a dispute over the status of the five persons, the failure to convene a budget assembly and “political” statements. Moreover, under Article 130 § 2 such a measure against a court president lies only with the Minister of Justice.
3. Ms Korwin-Piotrowska is not a CT judge. As the CT held in K 34/15, the oath is not a mere ceremony: until it is taken, “the filling of judicial posts has not yet occurred”. The Speaker of the Sejm has no competence to receive it. Moreover, under Article 4(2) of the Status Act, refusal to take the oath is equivalent to renunciation of the post, and choosing a form unknown to the law instead of the statutory one may be regarded as precisely such a renunciation. The governing camp relies on a Rule 39 interim measure of the ECtHR (May 2026) and an October 2026 Venice Commission opinion; neither, however, can amend a statute or confer judicial office, let alone authorise one of the persons concerned to depose the President of the CT with police support. Consequently, the rule letting the most senior judge stand in for the President of the CT cannot apply to Ms Korwin-Piotrowska at all.

The rules on substituting for the President of the CT presuppose a vacancy or a genuine impossibility of authorising the Vice-President; here the “impossibility” was created by the very order in question. The order is thus circular: Ms Korwin-Piotrowska first declared herself acting President and only then, exercising those very functions, “suspended” the President. This raises the question of the basis on which she assumed the office of acting President at all, given that she “suspended” the President only after assuming it.

The acts committed by Ms Korwin-Piotrowska may constitute offences under the Polish Criminal Code: Article 128 (activity aimed at removing a constitutional organ by force, and influencing its official acts by force or unlawful threat – an offence commonly referred to as a coup d’état) and Article 227 (performing an official act while impersonating a public official). The physical obstruction of the President of the Republic may also amount to active assault on the President (Article 135 § 1).

3. Reaction to the events

The Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, addressed the nation on 31 October. He did not distance himself from the police operation: he declared that “in some matters there can be no compromise”, that the police had protected the Tribunal against attackers, and that “I intend to carry out my task”. By thus endorsing the operation, he has in effect taken political responsibility for it. This raises the question – for an independent investigation to examine – whether directing perpetration (Article 18 § 1 of the Criminal Code) of the offence described above could be attributed to him.

The use of the police against the Tribunal was condemned by the highest courts. The First President of the Supreme Court, Zbigniew Kapiński, received “with the utmost indignation and firm opposition” the news of police officers being sent to the CT’s seat, of the Vice-President being prevented from entering the building and of the “order” suspending the President and Vice-President. He stressed that the police “cannot be used as an instrument of pressure on judicial bodies and tribunals” or serve as “a tool for implementing the political will of those currently in power”; that Article 130 of the common courts act cannot justify such action by a person to whom the law grants no such powers; and that the rules on substituting for the President of the CT, designed to ensure the Tribunal’s continuity, cannot be turned into an instrument for depriving its incumbent leadership of their powers. “The authority of the state is built by respecting the law, not by a demonstration of force,” he concluded. The President of the Supreme Administrative Court (NSA), Jacek Chlebny, likewise called the events unprecedented, pointed to the police presence around the Tribunal preventing its President and Vice-President from entering, and stated that the limits had been crossed.

4. Fundamental rights implications

The events constitute an unprecedented attack on the separation and balance of powers (Article 10 of the Constitution): the parliamentary majority and the government, using the police, have installed persons of their choosing – including a former minister – at the head of the very body that reviews their legislation. The aim may be both to reverse the CT’s settled case law, in particular the protection of unborn life (K 1/20 of 22 October 2020, which struck down eugenic abortion), and to create new case law permitting the transcription of same-sex marriages concluded abroad, or even striking down the statutory definition of marriage as a union of a man and a woman, in disregard of Article 18 of the Constitution, which defines it likewise (though liberal lawyers seek to reinterpret it). A CT controlled by the government would also wield powers that go to the heart of political pluralism and democratic participation: it rules on the constitutionality of political parties’ aims and activities (Article 188(4)) and, at the request of the Speaker of the Sejm, decides whether the President is unable to exercise his office (Article 131(1)). It is also the only body able to review laws restricting freedom of expression, conscience and religion, and it hears individual constitutional complaints. The targeting of judges elected by the previous majority, together with the simultaneous criminal motions against them, points to discrimination on grounds of political affiliation.

5. Call to action – for international NGOs and media

The most valuable support would be legal positions and opinions by international lawyers addressed to: the Polish Government (Prime Minister, Minister of Justice – Prosecutor General); the Constitutional Tribunal; the Polish Police (Commander-in-Chief); and international bodies, namely the Council of Europe (Venice Commission, PACE Monitoring Committee, Secretary General), the OSCE/ODIHR, the UN Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers and EU institutions. Key points to be addressed in such positions: the constitutive character of the oath before the President; the inapplicability of ordinary-court supervisory tools to a constitutional court; the use of police to change the leadership of a constitutional organ; and comparative standards showing that no democracy permits such a takeover.

Jędrzej Jabłoński – Senior Analyst, Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture

See also:

• On the Seizure of the Seat of Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal and the Attempt to Install Its Leadership Outside the Legal Order
• Statement of the Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture on the Forcible Seizure of the Seat of the Constitutional Tribunal
• Polish Prosecutors Descend on the Constitutional Tribunal over a Former Minister’s Complain
• Bypassing the Head of State: Tusk’s Government Tries to Take Control of Poland’s Constitutional Court by Installing a Former Minister Without a Presidential Oath
• Unlawful “Swearing-In-of-Judges” Ceremony in the Polish Sejm – How the Tusk Government Is Trying to Take Control of the Constitutional Tribunal

Source of cover photo: Tomasz Daniluk/Ordo Iuris