{"id":1436,"date":"2017-09-18T09:10:33","date_gmt":"2017-09-18T09:10:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/justycja.co.uk\/legal\/?p=1436"},"modified":"2017-09-18T09:10:33","modified_gmt":"2017-09-18T09:10:33","slug":"why-it-matters-2-fair-legal-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.justycja.co.uk\/legal\/why-it-matters-2-fair-legal-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Why it matters (2): 'Justice'"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author: Nicholas Richardson, Partner at Richardson & Wsp\u00f3lnicy (see website<\/span><\/a>)
\nContinued from part 1<\/span><\/span><\/a>
\n\u201cJustice in the life of the state is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.\u201d The words of Plato, and whatever feelings of justice may reside on the hearts and souls of Polish citizens, for the Polish prime minister the state\u2019s justice system is in need of extensive reforms.
\nBeata Szyd\u0142o was speaking on Friday at the launch of a campaign to inform the public of those changes to the country\u2019s judiciary which the government believes to be indispensable. The campaign is entitled \u201cJustice\u201d and will be run in Poland and abroad by the Polish National Foundation, an organisation set up by 17 state-owned companies that aims to promote Poland internationally, whose head, Cezary Jurkiewicz, told reporters that, despite claims by critics, the campaign was \u201cpurely informational\u201d and neither political nor designed to promote the view of a single political party.
\nThe campaign is designed to show people \u201cjust how dysfunctional the Polish justice administration system is,\u201d Szyd\u0142o said, arguing that the legal changes were \u201cexpected by the Polish people.\u201d \u201cWe do not want things to be the way they used to be; we want them to be different. And \u2018different\u2019 means that the Polish justice system should serve citizens,\u201d Szyd\u0142o said. Continuing her argument, she said that the campaign was needed in order to counter \u201cinformation disseminated among the public, especially abroad, that the changes in the Polish judiciary are undemocratic.\u201d According to the prime minister, this kind of message discredits Poland on the international arena.
\nIt might be argued that there is a hint of shoot the messengerism at work here, since the changes thus far proposed have caused no little concern internationally, including the Venice Commission, European Parliament, and have caused the EU Commission to begin rule of law proceedings against Poland. Even Poland\u2019s own president felt compelled in July to veto two of the three government backed bills to reform the judicial system, reforms which the opposition claimed were a threat to the rule of law, not least by the extensive power given to the minister of justice and chief prosecutor over the selection of judges. And that is to say nothing of the other spats with which Poland is engaged with the EU, nor the question of German war reparations, none of which, in the way they have been handled, do much to enhance Poland\u2019s reputation.
\nFor his part the Law and Justice party leader, Jaros\u0142aw Kaczy\u0144ski, at the time described the president\u2019s decision to veto those bills as a \u201cserious mistake\u201d. He said that judicial reform was vital, adding that the Polish courts were \u201csick\u201d and \u201csick courts means a sick society.\u201d The difficulty in the eyes of some, of course, being that the proposed cure seemed rather worse than the disease, although not in the eyes of the party leader with his unique insight into the health of society. A theme which no doubt figured in a meeting on Friday evening between the president and Kaczy\u0144ski to discuss judicial reform.
\nPresident Duda supports \u201ca real reform\u201d of the judiciary, his spokesman, Krzysztof \u0141api\u0144ski, told reporters after the talks, adding that the president also said he hoped his proposals for reorganising the country\u2019s Supreme Court and the National Council of the Judiciary would be supported by the legislature. Duda \u201coffered assurances\u201d that the\u00a0judicial proposals he had undertaken to draft would be fully \u201cin line with the constitution\u201d and \u201cfree from the flaws that the president previously identified in his vetoes,\u201d \u0141api\u0144ski said. For her part, Law and Justice party\u2019s spokeswoman, Beata Mazurek, said that the Duda-Kaczy\u0144ski meeting focused on the president\u2019s proposals for judicial changes and took place \u201cin a very good atmosphere\u201d.
\nNobody would deny that Poland\u2019s judicial system could be improved. Cases take far too long to make their way through the courts, something which could be vastly improved by the relatively simple step of improving timetabling and setting down cases for hearing in blocks of consecutive days rather than having individual hearing days held months apart. Similarly, if individual judges are thought to be corrupt, bring forward evidence and remove those who are adjudged guilty. But the problem with what has been proposed hitherto is that it involved a greater degree of political control over the appointment of judges and concentrated more power in the hands of the justice minister, than is generally considered to be prudent. Of course, if one believes that politicians, of any party, anywhere, are to be trusted to exercise divine standards of impartiality and wisdom, there is nothing to fear. But since this side of heaven lesser standards apply, so safeguards for justice are required. And judicial independence is one of those.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Author: Nicholas Richardson, Partner at Richardson & Wsp\u00f3lnicy (see website) Continued from part 1 \u201cJustice in the life of the state is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.\u201d The words of Plato, and whatever feelings of justice may reside on the hearts and souls of Polish citizens, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1430,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_locale":"en_US","_original_post":"1428","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","en-US"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.justycja.co.uk\/legal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.justycja.co.uk\/legal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.justycja.co.uk\/legal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.justycja.co.uk\/legal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.justycja.co.uk\/legal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.justycja.co.uk\/legal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.justycja.co.uk\/legal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.justycja.co.uk\/legal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.justycja.co.uk\/legal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}