The regulation issued by Minister of Justice in Donald Tusk’s government – Waldemar Żurek, which effectively abolishes the System of Random Case Assignment (SLPS), is widely discussed in the public sphere. “Giertych, Grodzki, and Nowak can sleep soundly. The opposition is supposed to sit behind bars. It’s simple,” said Zbigniew Ziobro, former head of the Ministry of Justice (MS).
As we recall, in mid-September Minister of Justice Waldemar Żurek dismissed 25 presidents and vice-presidents of district and regional courts. He made this decision despite negative opinions from judicial colleges, citing the “good of the justice system” as the official reason. The Ministry of Justice argued that under current regulations the colleges had “ceased to be independent judicial advisory bodies” since most of their members had been appointed by the previous minister, Zbigniew Ziobro.
The “good of the justice system” invoked by the head of the MS is now becoming clear with the publication of the minister’s regulation in the Journal of Laws. Żurek ordered amendments to the Rules on the Operation of Common Courts.
The new regulation introduces the following provision:
“The head of a division may decide, in order to improve the efficiency of the division’s work, that cases to be heard by a three-judge panel under the SLPS will be assigned to reporting judges, while the other two members of the panel will be appointed by the head of the division according to rules determined by the president of the court after consulting the relevant judicial college.”
De facto, this means nothing less than the end of the System of Random Case Assignment in Polish common courts.
“This has nothing to do with democracy”
Szymon Szynkowski vel Sęk, former head of Polish diplomacy, appeared this morning on TV Republika as a guest of Michał Rachoń. Asked about the above matter, he replied: “Once people used to speak of kangaroo courts, courts appointed ad hoc for a particular case. This is heading in that direction, but it has nothing to do with democracy.”
The program director of TV Republika also recalled a passage from the letter of President Karol Nawrocki, which was read out during a conference at the Royal Castle in Warsaw marking the 75th anniversary of the European Convention on Human Rights.
“Questioning the status of judges appointed by the President of the Republic of Poland in this procedure is a brutal attack on the fundamental constitutional principle of irremovability, and consequently a conscious blow to the independence of judges and the autonomy of the courts, which guarantee the observance of human rights and the protection of fundamental freedoms. It is also an attempt to undermine the sovereign role of the Nation, which entrusts each successive President with the exclusive prerogative of appointing judges. By the force of the Constitution and by the will of the citizens, expressed in free, universal, equal and direct elections, the President of the Republic has the final word in this matter. Therefore, dividing judges into different categories, including denying many of them judicial status altogether, evokes the worst associations and can rightly be described as the terror of lawlessness imposed under the banner of restoring the rule of law,” the letter stated.
Asked in this light what President Nawrocki could realistically do in response to further acts of lawlessness by those in power, Szynkowski vel Sęk answered that “the president’s competence to appoint judges is absolute, rooted in the Constitution, and should be respected.”
He continued: “Yet we know it is being challenged – like many other competences, including those regarding ambassadorial nominations. I think that if this competence continues to be undermined, the president will react. We know one thing – Karol Nawrocki is a determined man, and he will certainly defend judicial independence as well as his right to appoint judges.”
Ziobro: “It’s simple”
The matter was also raised on social media by Zbigniew Ziobro, former minister of justice.
“Tusk and Żurek are just stripping Poles of the system of random case assignment. Żurek didn’t hide that he needs ‘trusted’ people – now he will be able to point them out with his finger, because verdicts are supposed to be ‘as required’. Giertych, Grodzki, and Nowak can sleep soundly. The opposition is supposed to sit behind bars. It’s simple,” wrote the politician on platform X.
Michał Woś, former deputy minister of justice, also commented again on Żurek’s actions.
“When I introduced random case assignment (SLPS) at Zbigniew Ziobro’s instruction, there was half a decade of hysteria about ‘algorithms’. Żurek and his allies lied that there was no full randomness. Now they govern and they already know: SLPS is random and cannot be manipulated. That’s why two-thirds of judges will now be hand-picked,” wrote the politician, adding: “Bolshevism.”
Paweł Jabłoński, former deputy foreign minister, wrote: “But seriously: if it were the PiS government abolishing random assignment in courts and introducing manual designation of judges at will – today we would already see sackcloth and ashes, red tickers on TVN, candlelight marches, European Commission interventions, complaints to the Tribunal in The Hague… But today, when Donald Tusk and Waldemar Żurek are doing it – the defenders of the rule of law are silent. Because this is not about any ‘rule of law’ – it is about power and political control over court verdicts.”