Headnotes (non-official):
1. The guarantee of judicial independence under Article 97.1 of the Basic Law does not by itself confer an individual right whose violations can be challenged in constitutional complaint proceedings within the meaning of § 90 of the Federal Constitutional Court Act. However, Article 33.5 of the Basic Law, which upholds the ‘traditional principles of the professional civil service’ and whose scope of application extends to members of the judiciary, confers certain individual rights that are equivalent to fundamental rights, among these the guarantee of personal and professional independence.
2. Any form of performance appraisal regarding the exercise of judicial tasks, including procedures and evaluations carried out as part of administrative supervision, must respect the guarantee of judicial independence in relation to the affected judge. This includes determinations of the standard expected of judges in terms of the (quantitative) caseload managed and proceedings concluded by them. Both the legal provisions governing such measures and the actual exercise of supervisory powers by the court’s administration and management only constitute a violation of judicial independence if they directly or indirectly subject judges to instructions on how to proceed in or decide future case assigned to them.
3. Objections to the way a judge performs their judicial tasks are not permissible as part of administrative supervision if such criticism amounts to indirect influence that could prompt judges to decide future cases differently than they would have without being reprimanded.
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Summary:
I.
Based on her supervisory powers, the president of a Higher Regional Court had reprimanded one of the court’s judges for failing to keep up with his judicial duties and had formally cautioned him to perform his duties properly and without undue delay in the future. The reasons given were that the judge had for years fallen considerably short of completing the judicial caseload handled on average by his colleagues.
He challenged the measures by way of administrative objection and recourse to the ordinary courts but was ultimately unsuccessful. In his constitutional complaint, he challenges that both the written reprimand and the formal cautioning violate his judicial independence under Article 33.5 in conjunction with Article 97.1 of the Basic Law.
II.
The Federal Constitutional Court did not admit the constitutional complaint for decision, based on the following considerations:
According to Article 97.1 of the Basic Law, judges are independent and only subject to the law. This enshrines the guarantee of judicial independence, which essentially means that judges are not bound by instructions but only by the law. Executive authorities are barred from exerting any kind of avoidable influence on the exercise of judicial functions. This extends to more indirect, subtle and psychological forms of influence. Where standards are defined against which the (quantitative) caseload handled by a judge is measured, these standards must fully respect judicial independence.
Yet in the case at hand, the Federal Constitutional Court did not have to decide whether the reprimand and the formal cautioning, in terms of their substance, were fully compatible with the constitutional requirements regarding judicial independence (Article 97.1 of the Basic Law). The applicant failed to sufficiently demonstrate and substantiate essential aspects of the asserted violation of his judicial independence. Most notably, the applicant did not properly address different interpretations of the nature and content of the challenged measure that were put forward by the courts. In addition, the applicant himself submitted that he does not assert any misconduct on the part of his colleagues, in terms of the proper application of the law and a possible perversion of justice, regarding the cases decided by them and their workload. In this respect, the applicant failed to explain why he – unlike his colleagues – would only be apply to perform his judicial tasks in a more timely manner, as was asked of him, if he changed his legal persuasion and the way he applied the law in the cases assigned to him, contrary to the guarantee of judicial independence.
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