Marco Buschmann wanted to be Minister of Justice. That’s worth mentioning. Because it hurt the proud house in Berlin’s Mohrenstraße to experience years of management who saw the justice department as a mixture of consolation prize and stepping stone.
Buschmann’s predecessor, Lambrecht, made no attempt to disguise her disinterest in legal politics. She is remembered above all for the audacity she displayed in order to provide party friends with highly paid positions. And through business trips with few official appointments and plenty of time for sightseeing. Katarina Barley was more enthusiastic about it, but she quickly escaped to Brussels. Heiko Maas was delighted when he was allowed to “promote” to the Foreign Office. Politics is full of lawyers, but the Ministry of Justice doesn’t count for much in terms of power politics. At the state level, it is not a matter of course that a lawyer will be found at all.
Buschmann has seen that the Ministry of Justice offers the opportunity to sharpen the FDP’s profile. The debt brake is worthy of all honor, but the hearts do not fly to the FDP for that reason. Even with the departments of transport and education, the Liberals have so far hardly scored. The Justice Department has to deliver, and it delivers liberal social policies. Here the abolition of the advertising ban for abortions was prepared, the right of self-determination for trans people worked out, the legalization of cannabis was pushed forward, as was double motherhood for lesbian couples.
Tightening creates problems
In one point, the turning point after eight years of SPD leadership is particularly clear: Buschmann breaks with the unfortunate tradition of reflexive tightening of criminal law. Crime is changing, so laws need to be adjusted. But higher penalties alone do not solve a problem. They suggest a solution and thus raise expectations that are immediately disappointed. Local politicians are not better protected from attacks on the Internet because they are now in prison for up to three years.
Sometimes tightening even creates problems. The classification of child pornography as a crime can mean that even parents who want to point out criminal images to the class teacher and therefore forward them, find themselves in court. Lambrecht wanted this change under pressure from the tabloids and against the professional advice of officials in the ministry.
It has become common practice for justice ministers to speak of the “full severity of the rule of law” and by that mean the prosecution of suspected perpetrators. Laws must be enforced in the rule of law, but the essence of the rule of law lies in the self-commitment of the state, the protection of citizens from arbitrariness. Both dimensions need advocates so that the difficult tension between freedom and security does not get out of balance. Within the government, these are the Justice and Home Affairs departments. An antagonism between the houses is exhausting in daily work, but beneficial for the country.
Image of the overly correct super lawyer
The problem is that Buschmann is overdoing it. He cultivates the image of the correct super lawyer with a weakness for footnotes. But in fact, he’s not very specific when it comes to achieving the desired goal. Arguments that don’t fit are made to fit. The professional advice of his officials counts for Buschmann no more than for his predecessors, only with the opposite sign. The full hardness of freedom.
Example: In the fight against data retention, the minister shows that the data material is handled freely. From the number of cases that cannot be clarified simply because the IP address is the only investigative approach that cannot be identified, he nonchalantly derives an impressive clear-up rate that in reality does not exist.
His staging as a subtle Musil exegete does not fit the robust style that his critics feel. A head of department in the company expresses technical concerns about data retention and finds herself in another department. As agreed in the coalition agreement, the federal states are demanding financial support in order to better equip the judiciary. Buschmann does not meet them, but then acts as if he had successfully concluded a pact for the rule of law. The countries feel cheated.
Now that’s taking revenge. A wave of protests has built up against his plans to record criminal trials with images and sound in the future. It consists not only of justified objections from judicial practice, but also of frustration. In the ministry, too, the initial joy about Buschmann has long since evaporated.
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