SN is no longer an oracle. Courts halt asking him questions

– Pursuant to Article 441 § 1 of the NCP, the court decided to mention to the ultimate Court a legal question requiring fundamental explanation of the law – it is simply a classical expression which Polish judges use, addressing legal questions in criminal matters. akin wording is besides found in the civilian procedure.

The rules will enable courts under certain conditions to formulate the legal issues to be addressed by the ultimate Court. This occurs when, in deciding an appeal, there is simply a question of serious interpretational uncertainty and a fundamental explanation of the law. This means that the court cannot ask the SN anything and treat this institution as legal advice in a given case.

SN issues in rule concern the most crucial issues: the cast of courts, the rights of employees, the division of assets, imports of goods or franc credits. The case law and the destiny of thousands of circumstantial cases in courts depend on answering these questions.

Risk of divergent case-law

However, as it turns out, there are less and less legal issues to the ultimate Court in each House. 75 cases were registered in that court in 2025, while 173 were registered in 2015. This means that in the last decade the number of legal questions to the SN has dropped by nearly 57%, taking into account last year's impact in the Chamber of Control and Public Affairs, which was not functioning 10 years ago.

Drastic declines are seen in each House. Last year the civilian Chamber received 60% less legal questions than a decade ago, 66% little in the Criminal Chamber and 57% little in the Labour and Social Insurance Chamber.

This trend is not just about last year. In 2024, the number of legal issues was 54 percent lower than in 2014, and in 2023 it was 50 percent little than in 2013. The largest decline in ten-year terms was noted by the Criminal Chamber. Only 9 legal issues were raised there in 2023, by 70% little than a decade earlier. This trend besides persists in 2026. This is evident, for example, in the civilian Chamber, to which only 35 issues have been addressed by September. In 2016, 118 of them went there.

The fall in the impact of legal issues on the SN is besides noted by justice Michał Laskowski, erstwhile president of the Criminal Chamber.

– Of course, it is not that the courts abruptly stopped having explanation doubts. After all, reality and regulations are changing dynamically. The origin of this phenomenon is most likely that the authority of the ultimate Court is no longer supreme. Courts simply lose assurance in the ultimate Court. We have division, conflict, we have neojudges, and this results in a failure of trust and authority – says justice Laskowski.

It points out that any of the alleged old judges do not ask legal questions to the enlarged composition of the SN or the full House, to which they are entitled. – Old judges do not ask questions to enlarged groups due to the fact that we do not know who will answer the question. possibly common courts have akin doubts, and possibly they have already completely lost religion in the ultimate Court, as in the Constitutional Court, to which they no longer address questions," Laskowski adds.

Courts must decide their own doubts

According to him, the much smaller number of legal issues observed may lead to a disunity of case law. – The legal question is to be a tool that settles doubts and divergent jurisprudence of courts in akin cases. Disunity is simply a very negative phenomenon for the judiciary. The presumption was that the most hard cases and the most serious doubts were the compositions of the best qualified judges, both practitioners and theorists. This was to lead to the highest quality answers to issues. In the voice of the ultimate Court, judges listened and applied these guidelines in practice," Laskowski says.

He admits that the little legal issues, the little legal rules. It is simply a resolution that issues an enlarged composition of 7 SN judges or a full composition of the Chamber, to which the legal regulation may be given. This means that it binds another compositions of the SN, which must include it in their rulings.

– There have been no resolutions of the full Chamber for years. No 1 asks for this due to the fact that alleged old and alleged fresh judges do not regulation in the same compositions and it is hard for us to imagine that everyone will sit together and deliberalize on something now that we do not decide together. This is simply a systemic problem – Laskowski points out.

In this situation, according to the judge, the general courts should decide their own explanation doubts.

The problem is besides seen by justice Aleksander Stępkowski of the Chamber of Extraordinary Control and Public Affairs, who emphasizes that the management of legal issues serves to guarantee uniformity of case law. "However, since the ultimate Court has been generating "substantial divergences" since 2020 to not say, legal chaos, it must not surprise the decline of interest in the universal courts of its unifying case law," says Stępkowski.

As he notes, more than 30% of the judges ruling in the general courts were appointed at the request of the National Judicial Council acting under the provisions in force since 2018.

– An crucial number of SN judges, and for a long time a majority, refuses to justice them. This is peculiarly the case for criminal courts, which, for this reason only, in the Criminal Chamber, are abrogated by an crucial part of the judgments and are denied answers to legal issues. I regret this fact, but I do not blame the judges who, in this situation, put the right of the parties to get a decision in a reasonable time over the concern for the uniformity of the case-law, since the judges appointed for this intent to the SN like to stay offended in the sandbox of the judge's rocoche – says justice Stępkowski.