Overview
- Released on Tuesday, the donation-funded study by 14 jurists maps how an authoritarian-populist party could undermine judicial independence in Germany’s states, drawing lessons from Hungary and Poland.
- It identifies two linchpin roles to keep out of such parties’ hands: presidents of state constitutional courts and state justice ministers.
- To address potential appointment blockades under two‑thirds voting rules used in 12 states, the authors back a fallback in which state constitutional courts propose candidates and parliaments elect them by simple majority.
- The report urges constitutional protection for courts’ control over their own case management and details how budgets, staffing and IT can be used to hobble courts or facilitate court packing, citing German examples including Berlin’s 2022 case and the Schill era in Hamburg.
- It contrasts the 2024 federal fallback that lets the Bundesrat elect Constitutional Court justices if the Bundestag is blocked with the lack of comparable state mechanisms, while cautioning that any new safeguards are inherently double‑edged.