nam 22 uu 4500 10.17176/20200123-181754-0 DE-Verfassungsblog cr||||| 200123s2020||||xx#|||||o|||| ||| 0|eng|| 10.17176/20200123-181754-0 doi eng 342 23 Filipek, Paweł Author aut Only a Court Established by Law Can Be an Independent Court The ECJ’s Independence Test as an Incomplete Tool to Assess the Lawfulness of Domestic Courts Filipek, Paweł Verfassungsblog 2020-01-23 Text txt rdacontent Computermedien c rdamedia Online-Ressource cr rdacarrier In A.K. and others, the European Court of Justice established a detailed method for assessing the independence (or lack thereof) of courts. The judicial independence test laid down by the ECJ, however, may not be entirely fit for the purpose of assessing the lawfulness of courts and judges which are established and appointed on the basis of flawed procedures by bodies arguably violating basic judicial independence requirements as established in EU law. The ECJ appears to limit the required verification under EU law to the issue of independence only. Instead, the reviewing body should, first, check whether the challenged court (judge) is “established by law” and only then, if necessary, follow up on the examination of its independence. Today the Polish Supreme Court has the opportunity to step up and give full effect to that criterion. funded by the government CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 CJEU ECtHR judicial independence Max Steinbeis Verfassungsblog gGmbH Verfassungsblog 2366-7044 https://staging.verfassungsblog.de/only-a-court-established-by-law-can-be-an-independent-court/ raw object