ABSTRACT
The regulation of the right to a fair trial in the 1997 Polish Constitution is quite extensive. It refers both to the guarantee of access to court and the requirements to be met by a court and by the proceedings before the court. However, maintaining these standards proved to be a challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic. This chapter is devoted to the analysis of Polish legal provisions concerning the functioning of courts, as adopted during the pandemic, and their assessment in terms of constitutional standards. The chapter argues that some of these solutions lacked constitutional justification and were adopted in an ill-considered and chaotic manner, contrary to the requirements of the rule of law. As a result, the standards of judicial protection have been diluted. A pandemic and its various phases is clearly an emergency situation and require the government to take swift action and respond decisively to it. However, measures to restrict the activities of courts during a pandemic are questionable insofar as courts control the activities of other organs of the state, and thus access to court is sometimes the only way for a citizen to challenge government decisions.
