Eight judges sit alone at Poland's tribunal, declare a quorum of their own, and draw the panel to judge the president they suspended

The sitting opened at 3:30 p.m. Warsaw time. Swieczkowski stayed away, and so did the seven judges who recognise him as the tribunal's president. They had said on Saturday that they would take no part in sittings organised by judges they call usurpers. Police stayed outside the building, where the protest in support of Swieczkowski has run since Friday. No new detention or injury was reported on Tuesday. Korwin-Piotrowska wrote to the national police chief, Marek Boron, asking him to clear free access to the tribunal gate and driveway on Aleja Szucha, where demonstrators have set up installations. Boron left the request without consideration, and police said the gathering was registered at Warsaw city hall, is legal, and will not be removed unless the people taking part break the law.

The fight in the room was over arithmetic. Korwin-Piotrowska argued that the total number of judges for the quorum count is 12. She excluded Swieczkowski and Sochanski, who are under the one month break in duties she ordered on Friday, and Jaroslaw Wyrembak, who took the seat of a judge the current majority calls wrongly appointed. Eight of 12 is two thirds, and eight judges were in the room. The act on the tribunal says the general assembly passes resolutions in the presence of at least two thirds of the total number of the tribunal's judges, and the constitution sets that total at 15, which makes the quorum 10. Interia reported that the judges in the room debated whether a quorum existed at all. Marcin Matczak, a Warsaw University law professor who has criticised the PiS era tribunal for years, warned before the sitting against changing the count, writing that lawyers who count two thirds from 12 instead of 15 are caught in a spiral of searching for legal bases that do not exist.

During the sitting the judges drew by lot the panels of the tribunal's disciplinary court for Swieczkowski and Sochanski, Zero.pl reported. The disciplinary court has 30 days to rule on the break in duties that Korwin-Piotrowska ordered against both men. The five motions by Justice Minister Waldemar Zurek to lift their immunity, filed on Friday evening, still wait for a decision. The tribunal's 2027 income and spending plan was the stated reason for calling the assembly at short notice. By early evening no outlet had reported a vote adopting the plan.

The Supreme Court's extraordinary general assembly sat from 2 p.m. under First President Zbigniew Kapinski, with threats to the constitutional order as its only item. PAP reported that 28 Supreme Court judges, 15 from the criminal chamber and 13 from other chambers, declared in two statements that they would not attend. They said Kapinski was appointed to his office in breach of the constitution and that a gathering of judges appointed under the 2017 judicial council law could not act as the court's general assembly. Rzeczpospolita reported that 55 judges backed the resolution the court's collegium had already adopted, and that the assembly lacked the quorum to adopt the resolution in its own name. The Supreme Court therefore issued no formal resolution of its own on Tuesday.

At the Presidential Palace, President Karol Nawrocki opened the National Security Council at 3 p.m. and turned on Prime Minister Donald Tusk in front of the room. He said Poland was meeting in circumstances without precedent, in a serious constitutional crisis, and he placed full responsibility for the illegal actions at the tribunal on Tusk. He said he expects the prime minister to stop those actions before the week in which Poland celebrates its independence. The council then sat behind closed doors, with a permanent American military base in Poland as its main stated subject, and no outcome had been announced by early evening. Swieczkowski has called Tuesday's tribunal sitting a social gathering and said that none of its decisions carries any legal effect.