Law and Justice (Polish: Prawo i Sprawiedliwość), abbreviated to PiS, is a national conservative political party in Poland. With 136 seats in the Sejm and 29 in the Senate, it is the second-largest party in the Polish parliament.
The party was founded in 2001 by the Kaczyński twins, Lech and Jarosław. It was formed from part of the Solidarity Electoral Action (AWS), with the Christian democratic Centre Agreement forming the new party's core. The party won the 2005 election, while Lech Kaczyński won the presidency. Jarosław served as Prime Minister, before calling elections in 2007, in which the party came second to Civic Platform. Several leading members, including Lech Kaczyński, died in a plane crash in 2010.
The party programme is dominated by the Kaczyński's anti-corruption, conservative, law and order agenda. It has embraced economic interventionism, while maintaining a socially conservative stance that moved in 2005 towards the Catholic Church; the party's Catholic-nationalist wing split off in 2011 to form United Poland. The party is soft eurosceptic; PiS is a member of the anti-federalist Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists and its eleven MEPs sit in the ECR Group.
Read more about Law And Justice: Ideology, Political Support, Election Results
Famous quotes containing the words law and/or justice:
“Will mankind never learn that policy is not morality,—that it never secures any moral right, but considers merely what is expedient? chooses the available candidate,—who is invariably the devil,—and what right have his constituents to be surprised, because the devil does not behave like an angel of light? What is wanted is men, not of policy, but of probity,—who recognize a higher law than the Constitution, or the decision of the majority.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If every man possessed everything he wanted, and no one had the power to interfere with such possession; or if no man desired that which could damage his fellow-man, justice would have no part to play in the universe.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)