Editor’s note: In the UND LEADS Strategic Plan, the “Equity” core value calls on the University to “promote diverse perspectives and inclusive worldviews” by offering “opportunities to understand diverse populations and meet their changing needs.” That’s the impetus behind the story below, which describes a challenge to democracy being faced by people overseas.

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Last Thursday, UND hosted an internationally renowned jurist, one who has attained celebrity status in his native Poland due to his advocacy for human rights and democracy in the face of authoritarian rule.

Judge Igor Tuleya, who serves in the criminal division of the regional court in the capital city of Warsaw, delivered this year’s Oscar & Amelia Fode Memorial Law Lecture, held in the VandeWalle Courtroom at UND’s School of Law. The lecture series — established in 1982 and held for the first time since 2010 — honors the couple’s philanthropic commitment to education in North Dakota.

According to Brian Pappas, dean of the law school, the lecture series has featured prominent judges from countries including Israel, Norway and Egypt.

Tuleya was the 2024 recipient of Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law’s global jurist of the year award, honoring his contributions to upholding democratic norms and the rule of law in Poland.

Delivering his lecture in Polish with his son, Iwo, at his side translating, Tuleya chronicled his fight to restore judicial independence in the country following reforms implemented by the Law and Justice Party, or Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS).

PiS governed Poland via parliamentary majority from 2015 to 2023 and has been criticized widely for eroding the country’s system of checks and balances. Of particular concern to supranational bodies such as Human Rights Watch and the European Union — the latter of which, Poland is a member of — was legislation curtailing the judiciary’s independence.

Under reforms enacted by PiS, the executive branch was able to exert its influence on the judiciary by dismantling formerly independent bodies tasked with safeguarding the independence of Poland’s courts. Among these reforms was installing PiS loyalists to the National Council of the Judiciary, which oversees the judicial nomination process, before sending nominees to the president of Poland for approval.

Tuleya called these actions “a violation of Poland’s constitution,” and opined that roughly “a quarter of judges serving in Poland have been appointed through a flawed process.” Tuleya and other legal experts have referred to them as “neo judges,” appointed not for their acumen but rather loyalty to the ruling party.

Furthermore, the government passed legislation creating a disciplinary chamber overseeing Poland’s judges, which was consolidated into a single PiS-appointed position. According to Tuleya, this appointee simultaneously held the title of minister of justice and prosecutor general.

The legislation — dubbed a “muzzle law” by its critics — and the disciplinary apparatus it created served to harass and silence judges who criticized PiS, or issued rulings opposing its platform. Judges targeted by the law faced salary cuts, criminal charges and for some, suspension from the bench.

“Judges were accused of being rapists, stealing sausages in shops, of being corrupt,” Tuleya said. “The aim was to create a ‘chilling effect’ within the judiciary. At its peak, hundreds of lawyers were being pursued by disciplinary officers and prosecutors, and 10 judges were unlawfully suspended and removed from the court.”

In 2017, Tuleya took his grievances against PiS’s reforms to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), seeking a preliminary ruling on their legality in accordance with EU law. That same year, he invited media into the courtroom to record the proceedings of a trial relating to the lawfulness of a vote convened by the speaker of the Sejm, Poland’s lower house of Parliament, which drew the ire of PiS.

In November 2020, after a lengthy investigation and hearings into Tuleya’s conduct, the disciplinary chamber — at the behest of the national prosecutor’s office — waived Tuleya’s judicial immunity, effectively suspending him.

After two years away from the bench and a protracted legal battle, Tuleya was reinstated by Poland’s Supreme Court, a decision corroborated by the European Court of Human Rights a few months later.

Following the opposition party Civic Coalition’s victory in the 2023 Polish Parliamentary Elections — led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk — Poland’s new government has been at work rebuilding the rule of law and repairing relations with the EU. Tuleya attributed the Civic Coalition’s victory in part to the “support of the civilized world — academics, lawyers, independent media and nongovernmental organizations.”

Despite the positive steps Poland has undertaken to restore the rule of law, Tuleya said there is important work remaining — with opinions differing on how to deal with legal precedent established by PiS. Tuleya said he favors abolishing undemocratic precedent or “rule by law,” as “in this case, respect for the rule of law blocks the measures adopted to restore the rule of law.”

Tuleya also cautioned against complacency in more established democracies such as the U.S., arguing that authoritarianism and illiberal democracy know no bounds.

“The plague, which initially tormented only post-communist countries such as Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Bulgaria, has spread to the countries of ‘old Europe,’” he said, citing Italy, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands as nations where such movements are on the rise.

Pappas commended Tuleya’s advocacy and encouraged attendees — many of them law students — to be resilient in the face of adversity.

“I’m really proud to have Judge Tuleya here with us,” he said. “Hopefully, very few of us will ever be faced with a situation like this. I hope we would have the courage to act similarly and do what’s right for the people we are working to protect, and for the system as a whole.”

Sporting a T-shirt emblazoned with the image of Russian opposition leader and attorney Alexei Navalny — who died in February while incarcerated in a Siberian prison — and the quotation “You can kill a man, but you can’t kill an idea,” Tuleya concluded his lecture by asserting that freedom depends on a citizenry committed to its survival.

“In this fight, we cannot be afraid, we cannot retreat, we cannot calculate,” he said. “Freedom begins where fear ends. And never forget that even behind the darkest clouds, there is the sun, and after the longest night, the day always dawns.”

Read the original UND Today story

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