The ruling Law and Justice (PiS) will introduce Justices of the Peace and streamline the court system by getting rid of appeals courts.

According to Polish daily “Rzeczpospolita”, the Justice Ministry is preparing a second wave of judicial reforms. The reforms will streamline and rationalise the system.



The streamlining comes in the form of removing the appeals court tier that considered appeals from district and regional courts. The reason for scrapping this tier is that it only adjudicates in 118,000 cases per year whereas the regional tier considers 14 million cases.



In order to reduce case overload, the ministry is planning to transfer minor penal code offences to be judged by Justices of the Peace (JPs). It is proposing that JPs need not have a legal education background. The requirements for this office will include being 35 years of age or over and to have professional and life experience and to be elected at the county level.



JPs will consider around half a million cases on minor infringements such as refusal to accept parking fines, petty theft or disputes between neighbours. This part of the reform has considerable support in legal circles, but there are doubts over whether even these minor offences can be handled by people with no legal education.



The reform will also bring in specialised courts for types of law such as criminal, commercial, civil, labour and family. All judges will now have a common status with one salary scale for all.



The ministry is also planning to widen the principle of civil oversight over the judicial system. This is to be done through creating consultative councils at the regional-court level. Their members will review candidates applying to be judges, will consider citizen’s complaints and will be able to initiate disciplinary procedures.



Controversial first phase of reform



The present government’s first wave of judicial reforms attracted considerable controversy as it included making Parliament dominant in the selection of the members of the National Judicial Council (KRS) and attempted to remove a number of senior Supreme Court judges via early retirement. It also brought in the principle of random allocation of cases (rather than by heads of courts).



However, not that much has changed for consumers of the system in terms of the duration of cases and the way they are processed.



The first phase attracted fierce political opposition at domestic and international level. It also created conflict between the government and the legal community. It remains to be seen if this second wave can be progressed in a more conciliatory manner.