Keeping Up with Changing Times
The Venice Commission’s Rule of Law Checklist is one of the most influential soft-law instruments for assessing constitutional governance in Europe and beyond. In December 2025, this comprehensive framework has recently undergone a significant update. The revised text reframes the rule of law in light of new challenges. The result is a complex document that captures the defining features of today’s digital constitutionalism, where constitutional democracies and human rights are not only threatened by public authorities, but also by private actors governing spaces which are formally private but practically functioning as public squares.
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Restoring Polish Judicial Independence
Restoring the Polish rule of law without doing more damage to it is a vexing challenge. Building Back Better becomes even more complex when the current president – part of the autocratic Law and Justice (PiS) party, which lost the previous elections – refuses to sign off on any law. Yet few would have expected the Venice Commission (VC), of all institutions, to make things even more complicated. This contribution first tracks the state of play in Poland following the VC Opinions of October 2024 and December 2024. Given the central role of the VC’s thinking in Polish efforts to find a way out, it then goes on to critique the Opinions on legal and strategic grounds before proposing an alternative route.
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