Two Doors Borrowing the Name of Law
On the evening of Friday, October 30, what happened at the Constitutional Tribunal (TK) in Warsaw must be laid out fact by fact. Judge Anna Korbin-Piotrowska of the Tribunal announced that she had suspended the duties of President Bogdan Święczkowski and Vice-President Bartłomiej Sochański. The basis cited was Article 130 of the Law on Ordinary Courts, the provision that the court president or the Minister of Justice may immediately exclude a judge caught in the act from duty. Constitutional scholar Marcin Matczak pointed out that the provision does not apply to the Constitutional Tribunal — he is someone who has criticized PiS's judicial reforms. The very fact that he made a statement that could be read as defending Święczkowski tells us the legal nature of this case. And that same evening, seven judges escorted by the State Protection Service (SOP) entered the Tribunal grounds through a door connected to the Prime Minister's residence. Outside the wall, protesters were cutting the fence with power tools, police were deployed, and three people were detained. President Nawrocki turned his plane to Senegal around in midair and returned home. The Tribunal's X account wrote "illegal occupation," Kaczyński declared that Poland had become a police state as of today, and Tusk wrote that "restoring the rule of law is our duty."
What I focus on in this scene is not who staged a coup. It is the fact that the passage into the Tribunal building was not the main gate but a door connected to the Prime Minister's residence. The way an institution is seized determines where its doors open. The logic justifying this measure points in exactly the same direction. Since 2023 the Tusk coalition has not recognized the legitimacy of the Constitutional Tribunal, has ignored its rulings, and starting in March of this year began filling the empty seats, appointing eight new judges. Nawrocki refused to swear in five of them, and Święczkowski refused to admit those five. The European Court of Human Rights ordered him to accept them, but he replied that the Tribunal has no such authority. The structure revealed here is this: the President refuses the oath and so does not create judges, the Tribunal President does not accept those judges and so does not constitute the Tribunal, and the government does not wait for that composition and forces its way in. Each of the three institutions sets the boundary of its own authority while denying the authority of the others. Neither side can break this deadlock without violating procedure.
What the Tusk side mobilized was not the military but the police, the parliamentary majority was on the same side, and it is logically impossible for a ruling force to stage a coup against its own state apparatus. That does not mean he restored the rule of law. He cleared away an institution he did not recognize, on a basis he created, through a door connected to his own residence. There is still no confirmation that this measure is legally valid. The other side is the same. A force that has packed the Constitutional Tribunal partisanly since 2015 now cries out for judicial independence. From the mouth of Kaczyński, who says "police state," came the judicial reforms of his own time as prime minister. And this clash is taking place in a country standing on the eastern front of the war in Ukraine. What decisions can a state whose judiciary is split between two authorities execute in wartime — this question is not a matter of the streets of Warsaw but of the Polish state as a whole. The position I stand in is still the same. Without relying on the rule of law of any faction, I hold out the agenda of wages, housing, and union rights in the gap this rift opens. I have only not confirmed whether Polish labor organizations actually have the capacity to seize that gap. I do not substitute judgment for what I have not confirmed.
One thought I have long held overlaps as I watch this. Blaming the weakness of an organization on the morality or selfishness of individual members makes analysis easy. But in that moment the real cause disappears from view — the failure of an organization that could not visibly prove that uniting is in its interest. Moreover, analysis that blames selfishness is never applied to the same choices on one's own side. Authority held by one's own side becomes tactics, and the other side's becomes selfishness. This asymmetry is the substance of cynicism, and cynical radicalism converges on conservatism in practice. If you draw an upper limit on what is possible, demands are left only with what is realistic, and that realistic thing is already within the range permitted by the dominant order.
What I focus on in this scene is not who staged a coup. It is the fact that the passage into the Tribunal building was not the main gate but a door connected to the Prime Minister's residence. The way an institution is seized determines where its doors open. The logic justifying this measure points in exactly the same direction. Since 2023 the Tusk coalition has not recognized the legitimacy of the Constitutional Tribunal, has ignored its rulings, and starting in March of this year began filling the empty seats, appointing eight new judges. Nawrocki refused to swear in five of them, and Święczkowski refused to admit those five. The European Court of Human Rights ordered him to accept them, but he replied that the Tribunal has no such authority. The structure revealed here is this: the President refuses the oath and so does not create judges, the Tribunal President does not accept those judges and so does not constitute the Tribunal, and the government does not wait for that composition and forces its way in. Each of the three institutions sets the boundary of its own authority while denying the authority of the others. Neither side can break this deadlock without violating procedure.
What the Tusk side mobilized was not the military but the police, the parliamentary majority was on the same side, and it is logically impossible for a ruling force to stage a coup against its own state apparatus. That does not mean he restored the rule of law. He cleared away an institution he did not recognize, on a basis he created, through a door connected to his own residence. There is still no confirmation that this measure is legally valid. The other side is the same. A force that has packed the Constitutional Tribunal partisanly since 2015 now cries out for judicial independence. From the mouth of Kaczyński, who says "police state," came the judicial reforms of his own time as prime minister. And this clash is taking place in a country standing on the eastern front of the war in Ukraine. What decisions can a state whose judiciary is split between two authorities execute in wartime — this question is not a matter of the streets of Warsaw but of the Polish state as a whole. The position I stand in is still the same. Without relying on the rule of law of any faction, I hold out the agenda of wages, housing, and union rights in the gap this rift opens. I have only not confirmed whether Polish labor organizations actually have the capacity to seize that gap. I do not substitute judgment for what I have not confirmed.
One thought I have long held overlaps as I watch this. Blaming the weakness of an organization on the morality or selfishness of individual members makes analysis easy. But in that moment the real cause disappears from view — the failure of an organization that could not visibly prove that uniting is in its interest. Moreover, analysis that blames selfishness is never applied to the same choices on one's own side. Authority held by one's own side becomes tactics, and the other side's becomes selfishness. This asymmetry is the substance of cynicism, and cynical radicalism converges on conservatism in practice. If you draw an upper limit on what is possible, demands are left only with what is realistic, and that realistic thing is already within the range permitted by the dominant order.