In the pandemic, the judiciary has a decisive say. The 2-G rule in retail in Lower Saxony no longer applies because the Higher Administrative Court has declared it to be disproportionate. Ban on accommodation, curfews at night, mask requirement at schools – there is hardly a Corona measure that has not already been the subject of a legal dispute. Some things were canceled, others confirmed. The judgments do not only move the citizens who have sued and the state government that issued the regulation. You are playing right in the middle of the heated debate about what is necessary in the fight against Corona and what is excessive.
Some comments are correspondingly quick-tempered, sometimes lacking the necessary respect for the judiciary. The board of directors of the World Medical Association, Frank Ulrich Montgomery, recently spoke of “little judges” who “stand up” and “overturn” measures that scientific and political bodies would have laboriously wrested. Winfried Kretschmann, the Baden-Württemberg Prime Minister of the Greens, has complained that he had to “grapple” with the courts during the pandemic. The courts provide evidence that the rule of law works even in an exceptional situation such as a pandemic. And as a thank you they become a buffer stop for the Corona frustration.
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