Die Verwaltung der Dritten Gewalt

The German model of court administration by the Ministries of Justice seems severely outdated. Fabian Wittreck demonstrates that the active role of the executive in recruitment and supervision of the judges is crucial for the accountability and democratic legitimacy of the judiciary. The idea of judicial self-government would lead to courts only weakly bound by the law but strongly politicized. This claim is based on the first comprehensive analysis of the German system of court administration from the point of view of constitutional law, given by the author, along with the description of other models of administration of the judiciary, namely the member states of the European Union and the United States.