Constitutional Tribunal. End of the term of office of Mariusz Muszyński and Piotr Pszczółkowski

At the end of November, the Speaker of the Sejm Szymon Hołownia informed that it had set an additional deadline – until December 11 – for submitting candidates for judges of the Constitutional Tribunal due to the fact that no one had been nominated earlier. Clubs of the ruling coalition: PO, PSLLeft and Poland 2050 have already announced that they do not intend to submit candidates. PIS however, he declared that he would wait for Hołownia's decision on the rescheduled date.

Minister of Justice, Attorney General Adam Bodnar when asked about this case, he assessed that appointing new judges to the Constitutional Tribunal to fill vacant seats would legitimize the activities of this Tribunal.

Muszyński and Pszczółkowski took the oath nine years ago, and these events date back to the beginnings of the ongoing crisis around the Constitutional Tribunal.

On December 2, 2015, the Sejm – then dominated by PiS – elected five people nominated by this club as judges of the Constitutional Tribunal. The parliamentary majority then supported: Henryk Cioch, Lech Morawski, Mariusz Muszyński, Julia Przyłębska and Piotr Pszczółkowski.

The names of these five people as candidates for the Constitutional Tribunal appeared shortly earlier, because in October 2015, the Sejm of the 7th term elected – primarily with the votes of the then PO-PSL coalition – five other people: Roman Hauser, Krzysztof Ślebzak, Andrzej Jakubecki, Bronisław Sitek and Andrzej Sokala, who were to be the successors of 3 judges ending their terms on November 6 and 2 judges whose terms terms ended in December, i.e. already during the next parliamentary term.

However, the resolutions on the election of Cioch, Morawski, Muszyński, Pszczółkowski and Przyłębska were published in Monitor Polski on the evening of December 2, 2015 – the same day when the next Sejm of the 8th term elected them.

The next day, at 7 a.m., President Duda took the oath of office from the four Constitutional Tribunal judges elected on December 2, 2015. Przyłębska took the oath a few days later – after the term of office of the judge she replaced at the Tribunal expired.

Meanwhile, also on December 3, 2015 in the afternoon Constitutional Tribunalwhose president at that time was Andrzej Rzepliński, found that the previous Sejm of the 7th term elected two Constitutional Tribunal judges in a manner inconsistent with the constitution (instead of those whose terms ended in December 2015). The election of the remaining three (replacing those whose terms ended in November 2015) was in line with it.

These events initiated the problem of “double judges” who were to occupy previously properly filled seats in the Constitutional Tribunal. In this context, Mariusz Muszyński, Justyn Piskorski and Jarosław Wyrembak were mentioned, elected in later years to replace the deceased Henryk Cioch and Lech Morawski.

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On December 3 – after 9 years – the terms of office of Muszyński and Pszczółkowski came to an end. Muszyński served as vice-president of the Constitutional Tribunal for six years. His term in this position ended in July last year.

The last day of Przyłębska's term of office is to be December 9. On that day, the Constitutional Tribunal, chaired by Przyłębska, is to consider the presidential motion regarding laws to reform the Tribunal. The president challenged the laws passed in September by the current ruling coalition under the preventive control procedure – before they were signed.

On Monday, the Constitutional Tribunal announced that Przyłębska is currently a “judge of the Constitutional Tribunal in charge of the work” of the Constitutional Tribunal and is therefore no longer President of the Court.

“Gazeta Wyborcza” was the first to report this, stating that Przyłębska sent a message to Constitutional Tribunal employees on Monday morning in which she confirmed that she had resigned from the position of president. According to the daily, her resignation from this function was to enable her to convene the General Assembly of Judges of the Constitutional Tribunal on December 6, which is to select candidates for the new president. Pursuant to the Act, in such a case, the meeting of judges may be convened by the judge managing the work of the Constitutional Tribunal, not the president.

READ ALSO: “A troublesome, stalemate situation” in the Tribunal. What will the president do?

On March 6, the Sejm adopted a resolution on eliminating the effects of the constitutional crisis of 2015-2023 and stated that “taking into account in the activities of a public authority the decisions of the Constitutional Tribunal issued in violation of the law may be considered a violation of the principle of legalism by these bodies.” The resolution also stated, among other things, that due to the Sejm resolutions regarding the election of Constitutional Tribunal judges, which were adopted in flagrant violation of the law, Mariusz Muszyński, Jarosław Wyrembak and Justyn Piskorski are not judges of the Constitutional Tribunal.

Since the adoption of this resolution by the Sejm, the Constitutional Tribunal's judgments have not been published in the Journal of Laws. However, at the end of May, the Constitutional Tribunal ruled that the March resolution of the Sejm was unconstitutional.