Poland's political, constitutional crisis explained: 5 events that led up to coup attempt
1. Rival appointments, 2015
In June 2015, the outgoing coalition changed the law so parliament could fill five seats on the tribunal before the October election, Euronews reported. On Oct. 8, the outgoing parliament elected five judges. President Andrzej Duda would not swear them in.
PiS won the election, and the new parliament threw out those picks and elected five of its own on Dec. 2. Duda swore in the new group.
The tribunal ruled a day later that three of the first five had been lawfully chosen and two had not. It said the president must swear in lawfully elected judges promptly.
Three seats had therefore been filled before PiS made its own picks for them. Those three PiS appointees, Mariusz Muszyński, Henryk Cioch and Lech Morawski, became known as "stand-in judges." The European Court of Human Rights and the top court of the European Union, or EU, later found that the three had been improperly appointed.
