President Andrzej Duda has appointed Judge Maria Szczepaniec to lead the Supreme Court’s Chamber of Professional Responsibility, a move that follows the departure of her predecessor, Wies\u0142aw Kozielewicz. <\/p>\n
According to the Chancellery of the President of the Republic of Poland, the head of the Chamber of Professional Responsibility is appointed by the president following consultation with the First President of the Supreme Court. The candidate must be selected from a shortlist of three nominees proposed by the assembly of judges assigned to or serving in the Chamber.<\/p>\n
The appointment of Judge Szczepaniec was formalized during a ceremony on July 9, attended by First President of the Supreme Court Zbigniew Kapi\u0144ski, Constitutional Tribunal President Bogdan \u015awi\u0119czkowski, and other Supreme Court chamber heads.<\/p>\n
The selection process drew significant criticism. When former head Wies\u0142aw Kozielewicz announced his retirement in October, the Supreme Court\u2019s Jury Council urged the president not to appoint a “neo-judge”\u2014a term for judges appointed by the National Council of the Judiciary after 2017\u2014to lead the Chamber.<\/p>\n
Critics, including Prosecutor General Waldemar \u017burek, have previously petitioned to exclude six judges, including Szczepaniec, from the Chamber\u2019s proceedings, arguing that their appointments by the post-2017 National Council of the Judiciary compromise the Chamber’s legitimacy. Some legal rulings, including one by the Supreme Court\u2019s Criminal Chamber in 2025, have questioned whether the Chamber of Professional Responsibility constitutes a valid Supreme Court body due to its composition.<\/p>\n
The Chamber of Professional Responsibility was established in July 2022 following the abolition of the Supreme Court’s Disciplinary Chamber. Following a drawing of lots by the Supreme Court College and a subsequent selection by President Duda, the chamber began its operations with 11 designated judges.<\/p>\n
Judge Szczepaniec has faced recent scrutiny, including reports that she questioned the appointments of prosecutors while presiding over immunity cases. The National Prosecutor’s Office has subsequently sought her removal from all immunity-related proceedings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Andrzej Duda has appointed Judge Maria Szczepaniec to lead the Supreme Court’s Chamber of Professional Responsibility, a move that follows the departure of her predecessor, Wies\u0142aw Kozielewicz. Regulatory Appointment Process According to the Chancellery of the President of the Republic of Poland, the head of the Chamber of Professional Responsibility is appointed by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-and-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}