I\u2019ve recently come across British news reporting that Germany is seeing a Trumpification of its judiciary.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Spoiler alert: we are not. Still, it should never have come to the current mess.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what happened: a couple of constitutional court judges have reached the end of their tenure. On the list of successors was a Social Democrat nominee, a renowned Potsdam law professor called Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf. The parliamentary committee in charge green-lighted her.<\/p>\n
But just before the plenary vote, it emerged there were so many dissenting voices in the CDU\/CSU that the two-thirds majority was at risk.<\/p>\n
After dodgy plagiarism accusations and a smear campaign fuelled by the far right, the vote was pulled. Now, there\u2019s a standoff: the CDU can\u2019t guarantee a majority, and the SPD refuses to nominate someone else.<\/p>\n
For the record, this is not the first time a nominee has been rejected. The most recent case was in February, when the Greens vetoed a CDU-nominated high court judge with a restrictive view on asylum. Public outrage? Didn\u2019t happen. Never has. Because normally, this is a consensual process.<\/p>\n
The quota for the Bundesverfassungsgericht is 3:3:1:1 \u2013 three judges nominated by CDU\/CSU, three by the SPD, one Green, and one from the FDP (if they don\u2019t make it back into parliament, that may change).<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re playing the blame game: this one\u2019s on the CDU. The whip misjudged the pushback in his own ranks, failed to stop it, and still let things proceed until it was too late to cancel the vote without publicly damaging the SPD candidate.<\/p>\n
That damage is done. A respected academic has been branded ultra-left, dangerous \u2013 even a child killer, all thanks to her legal interpretation of Germany\u2019s abortion laws.<\/p>\n
These laws are, to quote Goethe\u2019s Dr Faustus, \u201cdes Pudels Kern\u201d \u2013 the poodle\u2019s core, the crux of the matter.<\/p>\n
Back in 1995, legislation was amended to allow for abortions within the first 12 weeks if the woman undergoes mandatory counselling and then waits three days. Later, it is only permitted for medical or serious personal reasons.<\/p>\n
The reform was part of the reunification process, as West German restrictions would not have been accepted by East Germans.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Even now, those most invested in the issue \u2013 churches and feminists \u2013 still do not embrace the framework. But they\u2019ve grudgingly accepted it. In other words, it\u2019s a compromise \u2013 the kind the US never managed to pull off.<\/p>\n
Germany\u2019s solution is quirky. Abortion is technically illegal, but not punishable under the conditions mentioned. Legally odd, this was seen as the only way to balance a woman\u2019s right to choose with the unborn\u2019s human dignity.<\/p>\n
Menschenw\u00fcrde, as it\u2019s called, sits in the first sentence of Article 1 of the German constitution, just in case you wonder how important it is to postwar Germany: legally sacrosanct. This isn\u2019t just down to Christian values and human decency. It\u2019s also a response to Nazi-era forced sterilisation. So the story\u2019s more complicated than the latest TikTok reel.<\/p>\n
Last year, Brosius-Gersdorf was on a committee set up by the then left wing government to propose abortion law reforms. Her position? \u201cThe assumption that human dignity applies wherever human life exists is a biologistic-naturalistic fallacy.\u201d She went on: \u201cThere is much to suggest that human dignity only applies from birth.\u201d<\/p>\n
She\u2019s not alone in this. And no, she doesn\u2019t want unlimited, unregulated access to abortion \u2013 but to make it legal, which would mean health insurance could cover it (at present, only welfare recipients are exempt).<\/p>\n
The Constitutional Court has consistently held the opposite view: \u201cWhere human life exists, it has human dignity,\u201d including unborn life. So if you are a conservative MP who wants the hard-sought compromise to remain forever untouched, not voting for this SPD-candidate makes perfect sense.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Brosius-Gersdorf has said she\u2019d step aside if the row over her appointment threatened to damage the court\u2019s reputation or to spark a coalition crisis. But her supporters argue that renouncing would cause the most damage \u2013 she would be giving in to a far right witch hunt.<\/p>\n
The most likely outcome is that the SPD drops her and makes it very expensive for the CDU. That political bargain will hopefully teach everyone not to let these shenanigans happen again.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the plus side, the Bundesverfassungsgericht \u2013 arguably the most trusted institution in Germany \u2013 remains untouched by the chaos. And is definitely still not Trumpified.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019ve recently come across British news reporting that Germany is seeing a Trumpification of its judiciary.\u00a0 Spoiler alert:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[32,2000,299,1945,1824,2452],"class_list":{"0":"post-284026","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-friedrich-merz","12":"tag-germany","13":"tag-media"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114900129750698146","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}