In Poland, the governing Law and Justice Party had several of its initiatives blocked by the Constitutional Tribunal-the country's highest authority on constitutional matters-between 2005 and 2007. When the party returned to power in 2015, it took steps to avoid similar losses in the future. At the time, there were two openings in the fifteen-member Constitutional Tribunal and three justices who were approved by the outgoing parliament but had yet to be sworn in. In a dubiously constitutional move, the new Law and Justice government refused to swear in the three justices and instead imposed five new justices of its own. For good measure, it then passed a law requiring that all binding Constitutional Tribunal decisions have a two-thirds majority. This effectively gave government allies a veto power within the tribunal, limiting the body's ability to serve as an independent check on governmental power.
( Steven Levitsky )
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