Court Coup – Judge Seizes Poland PM’s Seat

Empty courtroom with marble columns and red curtains — Photo: Erik Cox Photography / Shutterstock

A Polish judge stood up on October 30 and declared she was now running the country’s highest court, suspending the two men who ran it the day before.

Quick Take

Judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska announced a one-month suspension of Constitutional Tribunal President Bogdan Święczkowski and Vice-President Bartłomiej Sochański, then claimed interim control of the court.
The Tribunal’s own official account called the move a “coup d’état” and insisted Święczkowski remained the lawful president.
Riot police surrounded the Tribunal building, protesters cut through a fence, and President Karol Nawrocki turned his plane around mid-flight from Senegal.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek say the move restores the rule of law after years of alleged misconduct by the ousted chief justice.

A Court Divided Against Itself Overnight

Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal split into two rival leaderships in a single day. Judge Korwin-Piotrowska said she was suspending both top officials and taking charge herself, a move the Tribunal’s own communications team immediately branded a coup. That is not spin from outside critics. It is the court’s official account calling its own leadership change illegitimate, in real time, on its own website.

Within hours, Justice Minister Żurek filed five separate motions asking the Tribunal to strip the immunity of Święczkowski and Sochański. He accused Święczkowski of running the court like a personal fiefdom and blocking newly elected judges from doing their jobs. Whether that justifies suspending a sitting chief justice through a disputed judge’s unilateral order is exactly the question nobody in Warsaw agrees on.

Authority matters here, and it is murky. Korwin-Piotrowska reportedly never received the presidential oath of office from Nawrocki, a formality the Tribunal says makes her claim to the presidency void from the start. Sorting out whether an unsworn judge can lawfully suspend a sitting chief justice is not a side issue. It is the entire legal question the crisis turns on.

Police, Protesters, and a President’s Plane

Riot police surrounded the Tribunal as supporters of the ousted leadership cut through a security fence trying to let Święczkowski back inside the building. Police said their presence followed threats against judges and staff and dangerous objects found near the site, not an attempt to seize the building outright. President Nawrocki was flying to Senegal when the news broke and ordered his plane turned around mid-flight to return home.

Opposition leader Jarosław Kaczyński joined protesters outside the Tribunal, turning a legal dispute into a street-level confrontation visible to the entire country. Scenes of police lines and a scrambled presidential flight make for dramatic television, but they tell us little about who actually had legal authority to act. The documents behind the suspension order matter more than the footage of the crowd outside.

Tusk’s Defense and the Deeper Pattern

Tusk defended the government’s role in blunt terms, saying restoring the rule of law is a duty even when the process is painful. Żurek went further, insisting the government had nothing to do with Korwin-Piotrowska’s decision and that she acted as an independently appointed judge, not a government operative. Those are serious claims that deserve scrutiny, not automatic acceptance, especially given how much the outcome benefits Tusk’s coalition politically.

Fox News presents the events in Poland in a way that seriously distorts their legal character. The most serious falsehood concerns the alleged entry of police officers into the Constitutional Tribunal. Warsaw Metropolitan Police Headquarters explicitly confirmed that officers did…

— Judyta Papp (@JudytaPapp) October 31, 2026

This is not Poland’s first fight over who controls its constitutional court. The battle traces back to 2015, when the prior PiS government packed the Tribunal with its own appointees, triggering years of accusations that the court had become a political tool rather than a neutral referee. Scholars studying judicial capture across Europe describe this exact playbook: elected majorities using technically legal moves, like appointments, suspensions, and immunity votes, to reshape courts in their favor. Whichever side wins this round, the pattern itself should worry anyone who values courts that answer to law rather than to whoever holds power that week.

A civil society coalition has now condemned the episode as an attempted coup, adding its voice to an already loud chorus of competing claims. That label carries weight, but no public record yet shows the coalition’s full membership, legal reasoning, or underlying evidence. Until the suspension order, the immunity filings, and the oath-of-office question get resolved in the open, Poland’s highest court will keep operating with two men claiming to lead it.