Rule of Law in Poland: Memory Politics and Belarusian Minority
In recent years, the Verfassungsblog has commented extensively on the decline of the rule of law in Hungary and Poland. While most of the contributors have unfolded the dramatic changes regarding...
View ArticleProvisional (And Extraordinary) Measures in the Name of the Rule of Law
The showdown was inevitable. At some point, the Court of Justice had to show its teeth and remind the Polish government of its duty to comply with the rule of law and with the values enshrined in...
View ArticleBialowieza Forest, the Spruce Bark Beetle and the EU Law Controversy in Poland
One might think that insects are rarely subject to political controversies in the EU. Not recently though. On 27 July 2017, the Court of Justice of the European Union imposed a temporary injunction...
View ArticleJudicial “Reform” in Poland: The President’s Bills are as Unconstitutional as...
When last Thursday, 23 November 2017, the Polish parliament (Sejm) held the first plenary debate about the new bills on the judiciary, it achieved a record in the world history of parliamentarism: the...
View ArticleCriticizing the new President of the Polish Constitutional Court: A Crime...
L’état c’est moi. Thus said France’s Louis XIV, and thus seems to think of herself Julia Przyłębska – since the 2016 “coup” against the Constitutional Court in Poland, she is the President of that...
View ArticleNext Stop on the Way to Constitutional Disarray in Poland: Electoral Law Reform
Last Thursday, the Sejm has passed another hugely controversial law that might change the constitutional setup in Poland without changing a letter of the constitution itself. The law claims, according...
View ArticleCats, Constitutions and Crises: Dissemination of Research on the Rule of Law...
V: Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now...
View ArticleThe European Commission’s Activation of Article 7: Better Late than Never?
‘The European Union is first and foremost a Union of values and of the rule of law. The conquest of these values is the result of our history. They are the hard core of the Union’s identity and enable...
View ArticleSome Thoughts on Authoritarian Backsliding
In December I took part in a number of discussions, including at two interesting conferences – one in Nijmegen (the Netherlands) and the other in Berlin. Both of these conferences were on the subject...
View Article„A Good Constitution” and the Habits of Heart
2018: Saving the Constitution or Writing an obituary for it ? While democracy tells the story how to gain political power and implement the political agenda, constitutionalism puts premium on learning...
View ArticleThe Commission takes a step back in the fight for the Rule of Law
(1) Media reports of 20 December 2017 almost dwarfed the news of the Commission moving to initiate the judicial stage of the infringement proceedings against Poland based on Article 258 TFEU, in...
View ArticleMemory Laws and Security
Security concerns are rarely openly invoked for the justification or in the preambles of memory laws – laws endorsing certain narratives about the past, often aimed at strengthening the collective...
View ArticleThe Right to the Truth for the Families of Victims of the Katyń Massacre
In recent decades, the jurisprudence of international human rights tribunals has aimed at crystallising the “right to the truth”. This concept was developed in the context of enforced disappearances in...
View ArticleRemembering as Pacting between Past, Present and Future
In loving memory of my late grandmother Czesława Strąg, The Righteous Among the Nations of the World who tirelessly taught me that in order to really move forward we must never forget about our...
View ArticleFree Men and Genuine Judges will Remember about Free Courts
I was sitting next to him in July and December 2017 at the Polish Senate. We waited long hours for a chance to speak to the Senators and try to convince them that the Supreme Court reform is a threat...
View ArticleCalling Murders by Their Names as Criminal Offence – a Risk of Statutory...
A recent joint symposium of the T.M.C. Asser Institute (The Hague) and Verfassungsblog on memory laws and the role of law in how we remember the past turned out to be prophetic: the scholarly...
View ArticleReviewing the Holocaust Bill: The Polish President and the Constitutional...
President Duda decided to sign off the controversial law allowing to punish those who publicly accuse the Polish nation and the Polish state of taking part in the Holocaust and in any war crimes. The...
View ArticleMemory Wars: The Polish-Ukrainian Battle about History
On 06 February 2018 the President of Poland signed a scandalous bill – an Amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance – which introduces criminal responsibility (up to three years of...
View ArticleWho will Count the Votes in Poland?
In the shadow of an international outcry concerning a grotesque and speech-restrictive Polish law which would punish anyone attributing to Polish nation co-responsibility for crimes during the 2nd...
View ArticleThe Rule of Law in Poland: A Sorry Spectacle
With political appointments to its National Council of the Judiciary (Krajowa Rada Sądownictwa, KRS), Poland is now seeing the next step in the dismantling the rule of law. This constitutionally...
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