[citation needed] The Constitutional Tribunal is made up of 15 judges chosen by the Sejm RP (the lower house of parliament) for single nine-year terms.

[3] This became an intricate process with 15 drafts developed, and the final act was ratified by the Sejm on 29 April 1985 which allowed for the formal commencement of the Tribunal's judicial proceedings on 1 January 1986.

[3] But the courts competence and judicial capacity were limited at this time, as all rulings on the constitutionality of bills could be dismissed by a 2/3 majority vote in the Sejm.

[3] The claimants sought to contend two paragraphs of the Ordinance of the Council of Ministers in regard to the sale of state property and the procedures and costs related to it as unconstitutional.

Before the new president of Poland, Andrzej Duda, assumed office on 6 August 2015, and the new (eighth) Sejm was seated on 12 November 2015, the PO majority attempted to nominate enough judges so that the judicial branch would not quickly fall under the control of PiS.

As a result, a law was immediately passed by the PiS majority to force the inclusion of its nominees, sparking protests and foreign statements of either hostility or support.

On 4 March 2024, following a non-PiS government being elected in October 2023 and formally sworn in on 13 December 2023, a package of measures was announced with the aim of reforming the Tribunal.

The measures included a prospective Sejm resolution calling on illegitimately appointed judges to resign voluntarily and branding Julia Przyłębska as not being authorised to be the Tribunal's chief justice (Przyłębska having been sworn in by Duda in December 2016 without the required resolution being issued by the general assembly of Tribunal judges, and being believed by a number of legal experts to have sat completely illegitimately since December 2022[a]), prospective legislation to alter selection procedures (requiring candidates to take part in an open public hearing and to receive the approval of three fifths of MPs) and eligibility (anyone who has been an active politician within the last four years, including even being a member of a political party, would not be eligible to sit on the Tribunal; any politician who did get selected would not be able to rule on cases relating to legislation that they had been involved with within the last ten years), and prospective constitutional changes to allow for the implementation of the measures.

[10] The Tribunal received a referral by 119 MPs on whether or not abortions of pregnancies unrelated to rape or not threatening the mother's life, which they call "eugenic", are constitutional.

[12] In July 2021, Prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki asked the Tribunal for a constitutional review of three provisions of Treaty on European Union.

This landmark decision marks the culmination of the escalade over judicial nominations and reforms between Brussels and Warsaw that began in late 2015, when Law and Justice came to power, starting with the 2015 Polish Constitutional Court crisis.

In the summer and autumn 2015, a change of power occurred with Civic Platform (PO) losing both the Sejm and the Presidency to Law and Justice (PiS).

The new PiS majority nominated three other judges on 2 December 2015 (Henryk Cioch, Lech Morawski, Mariusz Muszyński) and two others the next week (Piotr Pszczółkowski, Julia Przyłębska), who were immediately sworn in.

As a consequence, of the appointments made after the election, the Tribunal accepted the last two (Piotr Pszczółkowski and Julia Przyłębska) and invalidated the first three (Henryk Cioch, Lech Morawski and Mariusz Muszyński).