A tool of the government. The functioning of the Polish Constitutional Court in 2016-2021 Helsinki Foundation For Human Rights

The changes to the method of selecting Constitutional Court’s judges and the Court’s operational framework introduced in 2015 became a direct cause of the constitutional crisis that has persisted in Poland to this day. Until the end of 2016, the Constitutional Court was a crucial element of the human rights protection system in Poland. The Court was the only body entitled to examine the compatibility of laws with the Constitution as a supreme instrument. 

Against the background of more than 30 years of achievements of the Constitutional Court and its judges, the decline of the Court as an independent institution is becoming all the more evident.