Justice minister warns against Supreme Court move to shield neo-judges' status

The planned resolution

According to OKO.press, as relayed by Wprost and FAKT24, the full bench of the Supreme Court is expected to meet in early November 2026 to adopt a resolution that would bar challenges to the status of so-called neo-judges, meaning judges appointed after 2017 with the involvement of the reshaped National Council of the Judiciary. The request was reportedly filed by Zbigniew Kapiński, acting First President of the Supreme Court, who is himself counted among those judges. Several of the articles place the plan inside a wider dispute over judicial independence, and they note that how the council's members are chosen remains contested. In early October, Kapiński also put legal questions to the court about whether courts can question a judge's appointment by the President, and whether a judge who does so can be held liable.

Justice minister's warning

Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek responded on Tuesday, 13 October 2026, in a post on X that accused the Supreme Court's acting leadership of preparing what he called an attempt at legal absurdity. He argued that neo-judges were gathering a full bench to forbid questioning of their own status and to threaten disciplinary action against judges who apply the law. Żurek invoked the principle that no one can rule in their own case, and said that judges whose status is challenged by the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union cannot grant themselves a lifetime certificate of impunity. He added that Polish society should not pay multimillion compensation for their unlawful actions.

No one can be a judge in their own case.

Żurek also wrote that only legal judges can form a court, and that citizens have a constitutional right to an independent and lawful court which the state will defend. He cited Article 45 of the Polish Constitution in arguing that no internal resolution can stop the restoration of the rule of law or shield anyone from responsibility.

Judges push back

Supreme Court judge Bohdan Bieniek, of the Labour and Social Insurance Chamber, said the plan follows the pattern of Constitutional Tribunal president Bogdan Święczkowski and called it a repeat of the gag law. He linked the planned resolution to a September ruling by the Constitutional Tribunal that found the testing of judges appointed with the neo-KRS unconstitutional. Bieniek said he would not sit on panels where a judge's status is in doubt, and that he had not been invited to discuss the planned resolution.

This is a repeat of the gag law.

On Monday, 12 October, Supreme Court judge Włodzimierz Wróbel, who sits in the Criminal Chamber and was appointed before 2018, wrote on social media that Kapiński was effectively asking himself whether his own appointment could be challenged. Wróbel said the full bench was to annul a January 2020 resolution which held that certain appointments breached the Constitution, and that Kapiński had scheduled another sitting for Tuesday. Kapiński rejected the term neo-judge in an interview with Radio Zet, calling it pejorative.

There are no neo-judges, there are judges of the Republic of Poland.

In a separate interview with Wirtualna Polska, Kapiński said he had passed four different National Council of the Judiciary procedures, had been rated well each time, and that no one had questioned his independence or integrity.

What comes next

The articles place the full-bench resolution in early November 2026 but do not confirm an exact sitting date or its final wording. Whether the resolution would be adopted in the form described, and how lower courts would treat it, remains open in the reporting. The debate has so far been carried out through public statements, social media posts and interviews rather than through a published court decision.