Poland’s Fight over the Judiciary: Is Local Legitimacy a Way Out?
PanelVilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania
30/03/2026
Moderator dr MAGDALENA M. BARAN
Speaker JAROSŁAW GWIZDAK
Speaker Prof. Agnė Juškevičiūtė-Vilienė
Speaker Prof. Šarūnas Liekis
For over a decade, Poland’s battles over the judiciary have been cast internationally as a moralized struggle between good and evil. Let’s Agree on Poland: A Case Study of Constitutional Design (Oxford University Press, 2025), a Polish constitutional bestseller now available in English, takes a different approach. Written by 28 expert co-authors drawn from the broader IUS community of 130 intellectuals, the book offers a contractarian set of judicial reforms that address deep ideological divisions. This panel will feature two authors of the judicial reform proposals — progressive former judge Jarosław Gwizdak and Kaunas’s own professor Arkadiusz Radwan — in dialogue with liberal philosopher Dr. Magdalena Baran. Together, they will present the most innovative element of the reform: requiring not only professional endorsement, but also the positive opinion of assemblies of directly elected mayors from the region where a judge would serve. The speakers will explore how this design seeks to build judicial legitimacy at both professional and civic levels, bridging the divide between progressive and conservative visions of judging in Poland and beyond.

