Żurek said all six judges chosen by the Sejm, the lower house of parliament, had been elected lawfully and that the president had no right to decide selectively which of them would be allowed to take office.
Earlier on Wednesday, Zbigniew Bogucki, head of the President's Office, said Nawrocki had received the oaths of office from Dariusz Szostek and Magdalena Bentkowska, both elected to the Constitutional Tribunal on March 13.
He added that the status of the other four judges was still being analyzed and that no decision had yet been made.
“The president cannot choose according to his own whim whom he wants to see in the Constitutional Tribunal,” Żurek told reporters.
He said the remaining four should be invited as soon as possible so that the tribunal could function properly. Otherwise, he added, it would amount to “an obvious violation of the constitution.”
The Constitutional Tribunal is the body that reviews whether Polish laws comply with the constitution. In Poland, judges elected to the tribunal must take an oath before the president before they can begin their duties.
The Warsaw headquarters of Poland's Constitutional Tribunal. Photo: PAP/Tomasz Gzell
Żurek said that if no invitation came from the president's office, the oath could still be submitted to the president in another form that would be accepted by legal experts.
He suggested that one possible solution would be for the judges to send signed letters containing the oath formula to the presidential palace.
He rejected warnings from Bogucki that taking the oath before any body other than the president could amount to a constitutional offense and a serious crime.
Żurek said such remarks could be seen as threats and argued that it was the president who was failing to carry out the law by not receiving the oaths of all properly elected judges.
The four judges still waiting are Krystian Markiewicz, Maciej Taborowski, Marcin Dziurda and Anna Korwin-Piotrowska. They sent letters to Nawrocki on Wednesday asking when their oaths would be received.
In his letter, Markiewicz wrote that he had been elected in the same way as the two judges sworn in earlier that day and wanted to begin performing his duties as soon as possible.
(rt/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP