05 June 2023
Spotlight Interpretation and its Devastating Effects
After 1989 Poland struggled to build up a free state based on the rule of law. More recently, illiberal constitutionalism has been damaging these hard-won gains. This blogpost will argue that the systematic dismantling of Poland’s rule of law, without officially amending the Constitution, was possible due to a peculiar interpretative technique called spotlight interpretation. Its essence lies in the opportunistic interpretation of systemically important constitutional provisions to achieve the short-term political goals of the ruling majority, and it has arguably been central to the destruction of judicial independence in Poland’s constitutional order. Continue reading >>
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25 January 2021
A Weapon the Government Can Control
In 2020 the degradation of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal’s position deepened. This stage of the crisis of the constitutional judiciary in Poland can be illustrated with two rulings from 2020 Continue reading >>
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