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Enlarge this image Małgorzata Gersdorf is First President of Poland's Supreme Court. She says the ruling party's overhaul of Poland's judicial system represents a clear assault on her country's democratic system of checks and balances, and she says the EU has been too slow to react. Rob Schmitz/NPR WARSAW — Growing up under Soviet rule, Małgorzata Gersdorf says she yearned for a day when Poland would have freedom and justice. As a young lawyer, she took part in the Solidarity labor movement that sparked the transformation from communism to democracy in her country. After Poland's first democratic elections in 1989, she helped build her country's court system, and for the past six years, she's overseen the judiciary as First President of Poland's Supreme Court. "But I never expected this," she says of the current ruling party's overhaul of Poland's judiciary. "It had been our dream to be a free European country ... we thought no one would take away our freedom." The 67-year-old says building Poland's democracy took decades of work, and in a matter of just a few years, she's watched in horror as the populist party in power since 2015 has systematically dismantled it. "The only thing they haven't managed to achieve is removing me from office before my term expired," she says. Failing to oust Gersdorf was but a minor setback in the ruling party's step-by-step removal of judicial powers that led to Polish President Andrzej Duda's signing of a new law last week that promises punishment for any judge who dares to criticize the government's changes to the judiciary. "This means we no longer are a democracy based on the rule of law, as defined by our constitution," says the bespectacled Gersdorf. "The executive in Poland is now placed above the judiciary. This is totally unacceptable in a country based on the rule of law." That ruling party stripping power from Poland's courts is named Law and Justice. The EU-skeptic, anti-immigrant party was founded in 2001 by former Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński and his twin brother Lech Kaczyński, who died in a plane crash in 2010 while serving as president. The party won parliamentary elections in 2015 and again in 2019 on a platform that promised to overhaul the country's overburdened and inefficient court system. The party went straight to work, first filling the country's constitutional tribunal, the body that decides whether new laws are constitutional, with judges loyal to Law and Justice. Then, in 2017, it tried to purge the country's supreme court of nearly half its judges by introducing a law that lowered the retirement age. Enlarge this image The Supreme Court of Poland in Warsaw, site of massive protests since 2015, when the ruling Law and Justice Party began overhauling the country's courts. Rob Schmitz/NPR When that failed, the party changed tactics, turn
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