“Unacceptable” and “scandalous”
A dispute breaks out over the far-right AfD judge
02/07/2022, 1:25 p.m
In 2020, the Saxon Office for the Protection of the Constitution classified the former AfD member of the Bundestag Jens Maier as a right-wing extremist. Now the politician wants to work as a judge again in the Free State. His potential return to the judiciary is provoking strong reactions nationwide.
Jens Maier, a judge with an AfD party card, must have dreamed of working again in Dresden when he was a member of the Bundestag. In February 2021 he described his mood at a party conference in the city on the Elbe. Dresden is the “capital of resistance”, Berlin the city of “multiculturalism, decadence and omnipresent cultural racism”: “When I come back from Berlin to Saxony on a Friday, to Florence on the Elbe, it’s like walking out of the dark into the light returns.”
At the time, the 59-year-old was elected second on the state list for the Bundestag. That wasn’t enough. Since the AfD got several direct mandates in Saxony, the list didn’t go in the end. Shortly before Christmas 2021, Maier applied for a return to the Saxon judiciary, his previous job was the Dresden Regional Court. However, the return home to bright Saxony is not quite as quiet as he might have imagined. From the point of view of the Ministry of Justice, the case is clear: according to the Law on Members of Parliament, judges have the right to return to employment.
However, there is no entitlement to the previous office. By March 15, the ministry must decide where Maier, who has been classified as a right-wing extremist by the Saxon Office for the Protection of the Constitution, will be allowed to administer justice again in the future. You don’t want to give details. At the latest since the Maier case appeared on “ARD-Tagesthemen” it has been causing nationwide discussions. The main question is whether a man like Maier, who feels ennobled by the term right-wing extremist, can’t be prevented from returning to the judge’s seat. “Anyone who is not defamed as a right-wing extremist in these times is doing something wrong,” Maier said at the party conference at the time. For Rico Gebhardt, leader of the Left Party in the Saxon state parliament, one thing is certain: “This man must never do justice again.” The SPD politician Albrecht Pallas also considers Maier to be “unacceptable”.
Minister of Justice: “I can’t intervene”
However, it doesn’t seem that simple. Saxony’s Justice Minister Katja Meier from the Greens is in a quandary. She has to obey the law, but is also subject to political pressure. “Well, I don’t think you can really blame me as a person for not having a clear stance on the issue of fighting right-wing extremism,” she said recently in a podcast from Sächsische.de, an online service the “Saxon Newspaper”. The highest service authority has no discretionary powers when it comes to the Law on Members of Parliament, emphasized the minister, without naming Maier: “I can’t intervene. If I, if we could, do it, then we would do it.”
The Bremen constitutional lawyer Andreas Fischer-Lescano disagreed – first in a blog and then in the “ARD-Tagesthemen”. He thinks that a man like Maier should never put on a robe again. He considers the attitude of the Saxon judiciary to be “scandalous”; he accuses them of refusing to fight right-wing extremism. In the ARD he even called the Minister of Justice “part of the problem”. The ministry could certainly intervene with disciplinary proceedings as long as Maier has not yet been assigned to a court and there is an urgent case with “imminent danger”.
Landtag can bring about judge impeachment
Meier countered in the said podcast: “And to be honest, I haven’t heard any other scientist or anyone with legal expertise who shares Mr. Fischer-Lescano’s opinion.” A disciplinary procedure must be initiated by the court where Maier will later work again. The state of Saxony itself cannot initiate such a procedure. “If we were to do that as a ministry, we might be creating an incurable shortage,” she said. This could then also fail a possible disciplinary procedure in court: “Then we would have forfeited all possibilities.”
According to the New Judges’ Association, only a judge’s indictment can clarify whether Maier will continue to wear the robe. “A judge who does not offer the guarantee of standing on the ground of the free democratic basic order has no place in this office,” says state spokesman Ruben Franzen, referring to Article 80 of the state constitution. According to this, the state parliament can apply to the Federal Constitutional Court with a two-thirds majority that a judge be transferred to another office or retired. Such a state parliament majority would be given with the coalition factions of the CDU, Greens and SPD in association with the left.
In addition, it must be clarified whether Maier’s statements as a politician may play a role at all in the legal assessment of the right to a return to justice. The Saxon Ministry of Justice sees a starting point in an amended Law on Members of Parliament. In a guest article for the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” newspaper, the justice minister wrote that there was an urgent need to talk about how to remove or keep enemies of the constitution out of the public service – again without mentioning Maier’s name. Jens Maier does not want to comment on any of this. His party speaks of a “media witch hunt”: “The Saxon AfD stands by its former member of the Bundestag Jens Maier,” explains party and parliamentary group leader Jörg Urban.