Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party has suffered a number of setbacks in the last couple of months:
Republicans’ determination to put Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court marks an escalation of the politicization of the judiciary in the United States.
Kavanaugh faces unanimous opposition from Democrats due to allegations of sexual assault, his extreme views on presidential power (Kavanaugh does not believe a sitting president can be indicted or tried) and his partisanship. Read more
Brett Kavanaugh has been accused of attempting to rape a young woman in prep school and Democrats have been denied the chance to read tens of thousands of documents from his time as a lawyer in the George W. Bush Administration. Yet Republicans are rushing to confirm his nomination.
Why? Because they worry this may be their last chance to defend their majority on the Supreme Court. Read more
There have been two developments this week in the attempts of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party to subject the judiciary to political control:
Ezra Klein makes an excellent point in Vox: the stakes of Supreme Court nominations in America are too high.
Candidates serve for life — which, given modern life spans and youthful nominees, can now mean forty years of decisions — and no one knows when the next seat will open.
No other democracy in the world allows judges to serve for life. And in no other democracy is the process of appointing high-court judges so broken. Read more
Poland’s right-wing Law and Justice party is forcing through judicial reforms that the Supreme Court’s president, Małgorzata Gesdorf, has said would “end” the Supreme Court and “break” the Constitution.
The changes are expected to be enacted next week after a parliamentary committee voted for the legislation on Thursday.
During a hearing, lawmakers from the ruling party rejected all amendments from the opposition, refused to hear independent legal counsel and ignored warnings from parliament’s own lawyers, who said the reforms might be unconstitutional.
Grzegorz Schetyna, the leader of the opposition Civic Platform, has called for demonstrations in the streets.
“This is no longer a creeping coup,” he told Polish television. “This coup begins to strike.” Read more
Donald Trump’s pardon of Joe Arpaio, a former Arizona sheriff who was found guilty last month of criminal contempt of court, reminds me of that adage of South American dictators: “For my friends, anything. For my enemies, the law.”
The president can grant clemency to anyone, but Trump’s predecessors used this power carefully.
David Frum writes in The Atlantic that Barack Obama only issued his first round of pardons two years into his presidency. George W. Bush waited until May 2004, six months before his reelection.
Trump, by contrast, appears to have put no formal deliberation into Arpaio’s pardon. He didn’t even wait until the former sheriff could be sentenced! Read more