During its foundation, it sought to position itself as a centrist Christian democratic party, although shortly after, it adopted more culturally and socially conservative views and began their shift to the right.

The party was created on a wave of popularity gained by Lech Kaczyński while heading the Polish Ministry of Justice (June 2000 to July 2001) in the AWS-led government, although local committees began appearing from 22 March 2001.

In the end, Lech Kaczyński won the second round of the presidential election on 23 October 2005 with 54.0% of the vote, ahead of Donald Tusk, the PO candidate.

In July 2006, PiS formed a right-wing coalition government with the agrarian populist Self-Defence of the Republic of Poland and the nationalist League of Polish Families, headed by Jarosław Kaczyński.

When accusations of corruption and sexual harassment against Andrzej Lepper, the leader of Self-Defence, surfaced, PiS chose to end the coalition and called for new elections.

[42] After eliminating constitutional checks, the government then moved to curtail the activities of NGOs and independent media, restrict freedom of speech and assembly, and reduce the qualifications required for civil service jobs in order to fill these positions with party loyalists.

[52][53] Although PiS would be unable to govern on its own, the Polish president Andrzej Duda stated his intention to re-appoint the incumbent Mateusz Morawiecki as prime minister due to the existing albeit unofficial convention of nominating a member of the winning party.

The opposition parties subsequently signed a coalition agreement on 10 November, de facto taking over control of the Sejm, and agreed to nominate former prime minister and European Council President Donald Tusk as their candidate.

On 16 November 2010, MPs Joanna Kluzik-Rostkowska, Elżbieta Jakubiak and Paweł Poncyljusz, and MEPs Adam Bielan and Michał Kamiński formed a new political group, Poland Comes First (Polska jest Najważniejsza).

Like Civic Platform, but unlike the fringe parties to the right, Law and Justice originated from the anti-communist Solidarity trade union (which is a major cleavage in Polish politics), which was not a theocratic organisation.

However, it suddenly lost all influence when Kaczyński's party, Centre Agreement, failed to reach the newly-established 5% electoral threshold in the 1993 Polish parliamentary election.

[68] For the first years after its foundation, Law and Justice was characterized as a moderate, single-issue party narrowly focused on the issue of 'law and order', appealing to voters concerned about corruption and high crime rates.

In 2006, Chicago Tribune wrote that "President Kaczynski's Law and Justice Party ran on a populist reform platform but veered sharply to the right after its victory".

[73] According to Polish political scientists Krzysztof Kowalczyk and Jerzy Sielski, Law and Justice had moved from a single-issue party in 2001 to a staunchly and broadly conservative one by 2006.

They noted that by 2006 the party started calling for a "conservative revolution" that would restore traditional values to Poland, and gradually adopted right-wing populist rhetoric characterized by a "somewhat leftist" economical policy to undercut the appeal of far-right anti-capitalist League of Polish Families (LPR), agrarian socialist Self-Defence of the Republic of Poland (Samoobrona) and the agrarian Polish People's Party (PSL).

[77] This pivot led the leader of far-left Samoobrona, Andrzej Lepper, to endorse Lech Kaczyński in the 2005 Polish presidential election, arguing that left-wing voters must vote against the neoliberalism of Civic Platform; Lepper also justified his decision on the basis of Kaczyński's declarations in support of funding social welfare, fighting unemployment and taking a tougher stance towards the European Union.

[103] Given the redistributive and protectionist agenda of the party as well as its focus on welfare and nationalization, some political scientists classify Law and Justice as economically left-wing.

[90] The economic views and policies of Law and Justice derive from the Polish political party Self-Defence of the Republic of Poland (Samoobrona) led by Andrzej Lepper.

[108] The party claims to represent the "marginalised vast majority of Poles" who had to bear the costs of capitalist transformation, and states that its main goal is to provide the "common man its fair economic share of societal resources".

PiS is a strong supporter of lustration (lustracja), a verification system created ostensibly to combat the influence of the Communist era security apparatus in Polish society.

PiS planned to introduce a fully professional army and end conscription by 2012; in August 2008, compulsory military service was abolished in Poland.

[120] Though the PiS government initially advocated a pro-Israel policy, relations with Israel deteriorated following the 2018 Amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance and subsequent diplomatic incidents.

Also in 2017, the party's MPs passed a law that bans most retail trade on Sundays on the premise that workers will supposedly spend more time with their families.

[150] Lech Kaczyński, while mayor of Warsaw, refused authorisation for a gay pride march; declaring that it would be obscene and offensive to other people's religious beliefs.

[153] In 2016, Beata Szydło's government disbanded the Council for the Prevention of Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Intolerance, an advisory body set up in 2011 by then-Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

[154][155] Many local towns, cities,[156][157] and Voivodeship sejmiks[158] comprising a third of Poland's territory have declared their respective regions as LGBT-free zones with the encouragement of the ruling PiS.

[185] Consequently, in the campaign leading to the 2015 Polish parliamentary election, PiS adopted the discourse typical of the populist-right, linking national security with immigration.

[187] Examples of anti-migration and anti-Islam comments by PiS politicians when discussing the European migrant crisis:[188] in 2015, Jarosław Kaczyński stated that Poland can not accept any refugees because "they could spread infectious diseases.

[190] In 2017, Interior minister of Poland Mariusz Błaszczak stated that he would like to be called "Charles the Hammer who stopped the Muslim invasion of Europe in the 8th century".

The second major group is a radical, religious and hard Eurosceptic right-wing faction focused around Antoni Macierewicz, Beata Szydło that has close views to United Poland party of Zbigniew Ziobro.