DSaxon Minister of Justice Katja Meier (Greens) would like to change further laws in order to take more effective action against extremist judges and civil servants. In a catalog of measures, which is available exclusively to the FAZ, she pleads for civil servants and judges who are elected to the Bundestag or a state parliament to be banned from working against the free democratic basic order even while they are members of parliament.
Meier would also like to limit the right of former MPs to return to civil service and judicial service if they have “lost the trust of their employer or the general public” due to extremist statements. Whether this is the case should be decided by the magistrate’s service court at the request of the Ministry of Justice.
Meier is also in favor of extending the deadlines in the Federal Constitutional Court Act, in which the Bundestag can initiate an indictment of a judge. Such an indictment should no longer be able to delay the retirement of a judge. In Saxony, Meier would like to establish a right of self-intervention for the Ministry of Justice for disciplinary proceedings if the subject of the proceedings is a judge’s violation of the constitutional obligation. So far in Saxony, the direct superior of the judge, usually a court president, has to deal with it first.
“New legal territory”
The proposals of the Saxon Minister of Justice go far beyond a resolution of the Ministers of Justice Conference last Thursday. The ministers had only called for the Federal Disciplinary Act and the German Judges Act to be amended. Meier’s catalog of measures interferes much more with the free mandate of MPs and judicial independence. Both legal institutions are specially protected by the Basic Law.
In the FAZ objection podcast, Meier said that the subject was partly in “uncharted legal territory”. Your paper should be understood as an “impulse” to lead a nationwide discussion about it. For them it was “completely clear” that changes to the Law on Members of Parliament and the Law on the Federal Constitutional Court would ultimately have to come from Parliament.
More on the subject on our pages faz.net/einsprechen
