Courts are often seen as the last safeguard for individual rights. Yet, we still know relatively little about how national judges engage with the growing legal and political tensions surrounding asylum. This project explores whether courts in Poland safeguard the rule of law in asylum cases and what socio-legal factors influence their adjudication. Using a socio-legal approach, the project combines a systematic analysis of judicial decisions of Polish courts dealing with the Polish-Belarusian border with semi-structured interviews with legal practitioners. The empirical focus will be on cases concerning pushbacks and other related barriers to asylum access. By investigating how national courts respond to politically sensitive cases, this project aims at contributing to debates on constitutional resilience, democratic backsliding, and the future of legal accountability in Europe. Ultimately, the project intends to answer the following question: when politics fails the rule of law, can courts step in to uphold it - also for those at the margins?
Wed 25 Feb 2026 – Wed 25 Mar 2026
When the Rule of Law Hits the Border Fence: Exploring the Role of Courts in Adjudicating Pushbacks
Fellow Talk by Hubert Bekisz (European University Institute) | Chair: Łukasz Szoszkiewicz (Adam Mickiewicz University / The Neurorights Foundation) | Discussant: Grażyna Baranowska (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg)
Hubert Bekisz is a PhD Researcher in Law at the European University Institute in Florence (EUI). His research interests include EU migration and asylum law, EU free movement law, and the judicial architecture of the European Union. Hubert’s PhD project, under the supervision of Professor Urška Šadl, explores the implications of EU procedural harmonization in the field of asylum on national courts’ adjudication of the right to an effective remedy. Hubert collaborates as a country expert with the ERC-funded Gatekeepers to International Refugee Law? - The Role of Courts in Shaping Access to Asylum (ACCESS) project, led by Professor Madalina Moraru at the University of Bologna. His earlier research collaborations included the ERC-funded Human Rights Nudge project, led by Professor Veronika Fikfak at the University of Copenhagen, and the Sapere Aude-funded Judging Under the Influence project at the University of Copenhagen and the EUI, headed by Professor Urška Šadl. Hubert holds a master’s degree in Law from the University of Warsaw, an MA in European Interdisciplinary Studies from the College of Europe, and an LLM in Comparative, European and International Laws from the EUI.
The Fellow Talk will be chaired by Łukasz Szoszkiewicz and Grażyna Baranowska will be the discussant.
