Midnight judges

Recently: Why is life so hectic? William E. Scheuerman on how high-speed society makes strongmen appealing—and why they can’t really deliver. (Open-access, in partnership with the Marlborough House Foundation.)

Today: Police lock out a chief justice, a president forces his way in, and no one in Warsaw seems sure who’s in charge … &c.

For members: The weekend despatch is here.

+ New music from The Olivia Tremor Control …

U.K. & Europe

Through the gate

At about 6 p.m. on Friday, the pilot flying Poland’s President Karol Nawrocki to Senegal told the reporters on board that the plane was turning back. A notice on the Constitutional Tribunal’s website said that Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, a judge elected by parliament in March, had suspended the court’s chief justice, Bogdan Święczkowski. Government security officers brought her and six other judges inside through a gate from the prime minister’s office. Officers at the cordon stopped Święczkowski short of the building. Shortly before 1 a.m. on Saturday, Nawrocki went in himself. The president’s office says the judges blocked his way; the judges say he pushed through them.

‘A million reasons’

By what authority? Korwin-Piotrowska says Święczkowski has kept five of the new judges, her among them, off the bench, defied a European Court of Human Rights order to seat them, and stalled the court’s budget. Marcin Matczak, a law professor who’s long attacked the opposition Law and Justice party’s hold on the courts, calls the legal basis for suspending him “nonexistent for a million reasons”: The law Korwin-Piotrowska cited gives that power to the justice minister, he says, and the minister doesn’t oversee this court. She’s called the judges together on Monday to pass a budget, but by Matczak’s count a full meeting needs 10 judges, and she has seven or eight.

‘Bad blood’

Here in The Signal, Ivan Krastev says Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s coalition came to power facing “critical institutions in Poland—the regulators, the Constitutional Court, the Central Bank” that “are staffed by Law & Justice loyalists.” Krastev was speaking in November 2023, weeks after the coalition won. There was “so much bad blood,” he says, that “the government could wind up replicating some of the polarizing patterns of Law & Justice.” In September, parliament elected Maciej Berek, a minister in Tusk’s government until August, to the tribunal. Tusk, who’s called Berek his “right-hand man,” says Berek’s work in government was “apolitical and nonpartisan.” … See “The end of Law and Justice.”

Good behavior

On February 13, 1801, less than three weeks before he left office, U.S. President John Adams signed a law creating 16 new federal circuit judgeships, and the outgoing Federalist majority in the Senate hastily confirmed the men he chose. Their opponents called them the “midnight judges.” On March 8, 1802, Congress, now in the hands of President Thomas Jefferson’s party, the Democratic-Republicans, abolished all 16 seats. The Constitution let judges serve “during good Behaviour,” and the Federalists said that meant no statute could remove them. That April, Congress canceled the Supreme Court’s June term, and the court didn’t sit again until February 1803—when it let the abolition stand.

Meanwhile

Before the U.S. midterms, the Justice Department asks a judge to set aside Alaska ballots ranking Daniel J. Sullivan, running for the Senate, saying voters may confuse him with Senator Dan Sullivan. … Russia’s Novaya Gazeta, six of whose reporters have been killed since 1993, says the authorities have forced it to close. … Ebola deaths in the Democratic Republic of Congo pass 5,000. … Israel’s internal security service brings in the Mossad to investigate alleged foreign money in the election (see “‘Thousands of envelopes with cash’”). … & An amateur astronomer spots 2026 ED138, a possible dwarf planet beyond Pluto, in 1954 photographs.

Thoughts? concierge@thesgnl.com.

The weekend despatch

The Doha curriculum

Eyes only

• The founder of the snack company Kind says the CEO of the media brand Semafor once bragged to him about getting a mint from the Qatari government to train journalists. Semafor covers Qatar almost every day of the week. Huh.

In the air

• Do teenagers actually do better without social media? Standpoints from Matti Vuorre and Andrew Przybylski, Christopher Ferguson, and Leonardo Bursztyn.

From the files

• What does Google see in AI that investors seem not to? Daron Acemoglu on tech firms’ persistence in betting that computers will be able to think like people.

Features

• Why is life so hectic? William E. Scheuerman on how high-speed society makes strongmen appealing—and why they can’t really deliver.

Books

• Do Putin’s cronies believe in anything? Ilya Budraitskis and Ilya Matveev, Russia’s New Imperialism: Capital and Ideology.

Music

• What’s Elephant 6?
• & New tracks from The Olivia Tremor Control, Alchemical Sisters, Djrum, Jacques Greene, & Loidis.

+ Weather report

• Europe heads into winter short of gas, as forecasters look east for signs of how cold it’s going to get …

Music

‘Halfway Down’

Bill Doss and Will Cullen Hart led The Olivia Tremor Control, a psychedelic pop band from Athens, Georgia. They made two albums in the 1990s, and about 20 years ago, they started a third. Doss died in 2012 and Hart in 2024, and the band’s surviving members finished the record from notes Hart left behind. The Same Place, a 27-track double album, came out October 23, and with it, one Elephant 6 band is done for good.

What’s Elephant 6?