The ruling coalition, which until now has refrained from filling vacant seats on the Constitutional Tribunal while questioning its legality and refusing to publish its rulings, is now changing its strategy. They call it a “reset” of the Tribunal. Marek Safjan argues that judges elected by the Sejm could take an oath not before the president, but “in the form of a notarized declaration before an appropriately authorized notary.” A similar provision has already appeared in a Constitutional Tribunal Act later found unconstitutional.
“In this year, the process of selecting judges of the Constitutional Tribunal will begin. This is a coalition decision,” Deputy Speaker of the Sejm Piotr Zgorzelski wrote in October.
Four seats in the Constitutional Tribunal are currently vacant after the end of nine-year terms. Since December 2024, positions formerly held by the Tribunal’s former president Julia Przyłębska, Piotr Pszczółkowski, and Mariusz Muszyński have remained unfilled. Since April 2025, the seat of judge Zbigniew Jędrzejewski has also been vacant. On December 20 this year, the term of judge Michał Warciński ends, and in early December Krystyna Pawłowicz is expected to formalize her previously announced resignation.
The ruling coalition is convinced it may also select two Tribunal members “in advance”—to replace judges whose terms expire in 2026 and 2027. In total, coalition politicians claim that up to eight out of fifteen Constitutional Tribunal judges could be appointed.
The coalition itself is not unified on how to handle appointments to the vacant seats. One issue is whether doing so would legitimize an institution whose legality the same political circles have questioned for years.
Safjan: Oath before a notary
Marek Safjan, a prominent figure for the governing camp and former judge of the Court of Justice of the EU, has weighed in. He argues that the Sejm majority may appoint judges in advance because the vacancies of 2026 and 2027 concern Tribunal judges regarded as “duplicate judges.”
Safjan assessed that the president could block the nomination of selected Tribunal judges, but he proposed an alternative: judges could swear their oath… before a notary.
“Let us imagine, for example, taking the oath in a notarized form before an appropriately authorized notary,” he said on TVN24. “I am putting forward an idea here. But one probably has to consider a form that will be sufficiently credible in the eyes of the public,” he added.
Tribunal has already rejected this concept
Interestingly, this idea appeared during Senate work on Tribunal laws in 2024. It was proposed by Senator Jacek Trela as an amendment concerning—according to the portal prawo.pl—“a safeguard, in case the president does not accept the oath properly, allowing a judge elected by the Sejm 16 days to submit such an oath in notarized form.” Despite some objections within the majority, the amendment was adopted in committee and later passed by the entire parliament.
The Act on the Constitutional Tribunal of 13 September 2024 included the following provision (Art. 20 point 3):
“The judge of the Tribunal, after at least 14 days but no later than the 30th day from the date of his election by the Sejm, may submit the oath in written form with a notarized signature and deliver it to the Marshal of the Sejm. The Marshal of the Sejm shall immediately transmit the document containing the wording of the oath with the judge’s notarized signature to the President of the Tribunal.”
However, in October 2024 the president referred this Act to the Constitutional Tribunal for preventive review. He challenged the provision as a potential violation of the principle of legality in the operation of public authorities (Art. 7 of the Constitution).
On 29 July 2025, the Constitutional Tribunal found the Act of 13 September 2024 unconstitutional. Regarding Article 20 point 3, the Tribunal wrote:
“Creating the possibility of taking the oath before a notary conflicts both with the President’s role in the investiture procedure of a judge, as well as with the gravity and character of the oath of a Constitutional Tribunal judge.”