Is that really a decision for you to single handedly make? People make mistakes, but it doesn’t mean they are evil. Pushing them to admit their wrong doing, give up their livelihood/careers, etc. is just stupid. Especially if “doing it for fun”. That’s not admirable, it’s disturbing.
People have been using "the ends justify the means" to justify all sorts of unethical behavior, not the least of which includes torture, genocide, and wars. Let's not go down that ethical reasoning wormhole.
As for his story, my read on it must be much different from your own. Because from what I am seeing, this is far more about the judge's husband than anyone else, and it is to right a sense of personal injustice than a (still misguided) aim of doing what's best for everyone else. Oh, and he's doing it for fun (his words).
The judge felt safe to commit an overt serious crime due to her husband. He is the conditio sine qua non without which this the entire matter had not happened.
He could make a choice. Either talk to me or influence the court. The choice he ended up making is quite clear. Of course I could not point out his options, as that no doubt would have been misconstrued.
There is some evidence suggesting the cases at the court don't get assigned randomly, as per the rules, and she might ask for off-label use cases to get preferentially assigned to herself.
Upon an inquiry the court did not deny this is true. To find the truth one would have to verify the sequence of other case assignments, which should be possible from incoming filing times and such. Here a second case got assigned to her but with a sequence number oddly enough belonging to a different chamber. Per the law there was supposed to be a singular number, and for some reason she split the case without a required decision.
She is also the only judge at this court who ever wrote anything public on the topic.
Due to an adventurous recent personal medical history I became well-aware what problems unlawful denials do cause for patients.
Speaking of genocide, torture and war, since this topic is about german politics, it might be good to remember a certain time in that countries history, when the law was in support of all of these things. Breaking the law cannot be equated with ethical behavior. Social engineering is indeed a method, wether it is morally objectable needs to be argued and not assumed out of the gate.
I don’t think I made that argument, in fact, my comment was made specifically without the qualifier of it being legal vs. illegal. Manipulation (which let’s face it, social engineering is a fancy way of saying) is a pretty solid example of an unethical behavior depending on your ethical world view. Utilitarian? Great, you must also think torture is acceptable so long as it saves lives. Deontological ethical world views might have something different to say, speaking of Germans (e.g., Kant).
Regardless, I think contriving scenarios where you think someone may act corruptly just to catch them doing so is equally as unethical as a police officer encouraging someone to commit a terrorist act then arresting them once they do.
It is manipulative, may not have happened otherwise if not for the original actor, and is akin to saying “I hope you don’t behave like I’d expect a human to instinctually behave if put in a corner”.
Note I did nothing to manipulate the top court. The application was phrased politely and only hinted at a crime background.
Severe procedural errors including denial of access to court files alone justified a reversal, besides the blatant misinterpretation of the law. There was no need to argue beyond this point or label anyone an offender at the time.
(Ordinarily one would have filed to have the decision voided locally instead of applying to the top court, but that court had unlawfully denied access to the assignment rules and does to this day.)
Nice use of words specifying your actions regarding the high court instead of the judges in question, who were specifically being referred to.
You do realize that just because other people act like jerks, it does not give you license to do the same, right? I don’t know why you believe what you are doing is going to have a positive outcome for anyone, including yourself, but I think you have some serious growing up to do.
I’m sorry you had to go through what you did, I really am. It doesn’t sound like a positive experience and I have my own chronic health issues that have been a battle and I can understand being angry.
I just don’t believe it is yours or anyone’s place to take matters into their own hands, nor do I think their actions justify yours. In this situation, you all suck.
Consider I had just survived a rare cancer that kills nearly everyone who gets it quickly, then when addressing a serious side effect from treatment this happens.
Not claiming any moral high ground here. Many would descend into anger and despair or feelings of victimhood, I simply made a choice to play this like a game instead.
Hey, if nothing else, at least you’re owning it at this point in the conversation.
Separate: I sincerely hope you feel/get better my friend and are able to get the medical treatment you were seeking (if you haven’t already). Best wishes to you!
Thank you for your wishes. For future needs I was able to return to private health insurance which suffers from no such problem. However this cannot cover claims arisen prior to policy issue, so the subject matter remains open.
No judge ruling in this court actually has public health insurance.
I appreciate the offer. Otherwise I did have a superb experience with the medical system, that is real doctors not state workers with lapsed qualification.
Why do you believe it is your position to give any official ultimatums just to meet your own perceived sense of Justice? The way your are speaking about this is to right your own feelings of injustice, not anyone else’s, yet you do it under the auspices of doing what’s best for everyone else. Do they get a say in this as well?
You interpret this as an ultimatum, I see offering them a way out as being nice. At the same time one has to assert seeing through obvious b-s.
What is appropriate gets decided by lawmakers not judges.
Once judges willfully violate the code they have stepped outside their assigned role. This quickly became more of a political problem than a legal one, and what is right is ultimately for voters to decide.
Whether I am able to interpret the code and precedent correctly we will see. I did score close to the very top when taking the LSAT however.
To clarify, the "way out" was simply a new filing for an interim order based on the novel fact that a potentially lethal complication had just occurred in connection with the case. I substantiated this with medical and research evidence.
This was a very simple thing for her to grant, and in my view she was required to do so based on constitutional principles.
I would more likely than not have let the previous incident slide. Why she did not take this opportunity I have no idea.
You can try to wordsmith and twist the logic all you want. Telling someone “resign and do what I want, or else” is an ultimatum and bordering on blackmail. It is an ultimatum that is directly counter to your stated goal as well, which to “allow the voters to decide”. That’s you deciding for them.
Providing someone a nasty choice isnt neccesarily blackmail or wrong.
Imagine you work as a prosecutor. Someone submits fairly strong, and actionable evidence, that your wife has commited a crime your office is required to prosecute. You are legally compelled to excuse yourself, and let someone prosecute, preferably someone not independent of you. If you do, you know your wife will go to prison, and in the process of the procecution, your every dirty secret will be exposed, and even if you are entirely righteous, and was entierly unaware, and willing to believe the worst of your wife, your reputation will be in tatters. Its also possible that you know that the other prosecutor wont prosecute, but instead attempt to blackmail you, or your wife, using the evidence.
You now have a nasty choice.
Lets say you chose to hand the evidence over to a righteous collegue. Your reputation will be damaged regardless, but if you resign the damage will be light, and as you are no longer with the prosecutors office, you are not expected to approve requests for eg your personal banking information by default. Making it much easier to hide any missdeeds.
But if you keep working, everyone who wants your job will spread the information, and your opponents in court will bring it up repeatedly. Both with insentive to lie, or exaggerate. Further, prosecutors are often required, or at least expected, to cooperate with legal investigations in ways regular people are not.
Lets say you chose to hand the evidence to a non-righeous collegue. Your reputation is intact, but he will keep requesting favors, it looks better, but there are no guarantees it goes away.
You can also immideately resign, knowing that it will take a year or two for a replacement to get up to speed, and all you need to do is put the specific case on the bottom of the priority pile, pretend you never read it, and techically have commited no crime, while getting years to prepare, stuff to get lost, or just jump countries.
Or you can chose dismiss it for lack of evidence, toss the evidence in the bin, and pretend like it never happened. Its a boring procedural thing anyways, and odds are good it was just someone temporarily pissed off, who wont care. After all, they didnt even know they submitted it to your office, what idiot does that...
Its not blackmail. Its just that resigning is the better option for you.
I think the flaw in your logic is the assumption it was an either/or situation. There are a whole lot of options between “resign or face the consequences”, and let’s face it, is destroying someone’s career one way or the other (via by choice or otherwise) really a choice at all?
If you think it is, I’d be curious what your choice would be given the same scenario and whether you felt a bit coerced into your position.
Blackmail to me implies that the blackmailer requires something of the blackmailed, in exchange for the blackmailer to not take a specific action.
In my example, the sender has already taken their action and given no indication that they are willing to accept a bribe to retract it. If they had required payment to retract it, it would have been blackmail. Meaning no blackmail. The ops story is confusing, so I wont say anything about it. Not sure what you mean about choice there?
In my case? If I was roleplaying the example as the judge, probably call a press conference and loudly condemn my wife for her heinous actions, and promise to vindictively prosecute her to the full extent of the law. Then I would start doing that, knowing full well that her lawyer will argue I committed a procedural errors in managing the evidence(as people cannot prosecute their close relatives, or manage evidence thereof) which then precludes its use in court, letting her go free by technicality... While I win the next election for being the righteous crusader against corruption no matter how much it hurts... Well assuming I actually love her, if I didn't, or wanted to upgrade to a younger model, now is a perfect opportunity to get out of that pesky prenup...
I would not feel coerced, but I would feel threatened. I would like to think that I would chose my wife over my career any day, I hope I never need to find out.
Being forced to make a choice under threat is kind of the definition of coercion, but I think we are getting hung up on semantics (e.g., the word blackmail) and you certainly raise a mature perspective and valid points. I think your interpretation of blackmail is much more akin to extortion, but we can at least agree they felt threatened.
The choice I was referring to was one of resignation and giving into the threat, or fighting the base of OP’s claim(s). Both lead to the loss of their job, except with one option they at least have a chance of keeping their job (fighting it).
Just to clarify, I said it was bordering on blackmail, which I think we can probably agree with each other that this was skirting pretty close to that line.
However, my contention was that it was an ultimatum, while he stated it was not. You don’t seem to be arguing that it was not an ultimatum, just that it was not in your opinion blackmail, which is fair and I won’t beat a dead horse.
Thank you for also sharing your perspective on what you would do in the same situation. I wish I could so confidently say the same, especially when you involve kids, personal attachment, biased storytelling (e.g., him hearing a different story from her than what is/isn’t the truth, which no one knows here), among other factors.
It’s a complicated situation to say the least and based on what OP said, I think there were some serious mistakes made that had a negative impact on him. However, I still do not think his actions are justified, for much other purpose than to be vindictive/take out his anger, and is super risky for everyone involved.
We know nothing about these personalities and outside OP’s own experiences, neither does he. It’s also impossible to predict the future and whether his actions are going to somehow help society writ large, or do more damage than good.
That is my issue with the ultimatum, no matter what you want to call it.
I did not ask her or any judge to resign. This was a proposal to the prosecutor's office prior to filing any of the serious charges and triggering certain events then required from them by law.
Unlike public officials I was fully within my rights to first seek a more politically tenable solution.
There is no doubt everyone involved is fully aware of the situation, although people won't admit to it.
Ugh, your story literally changes and is moving the goal posts. So now it was the prosecutors who made the decision? Not that an indirect threat is any better, but here's your previous description: "I did offer each offender a second chance, as I thought they might have learned from this. They chose not to take it."
To each their own, do what you gotta do - but I stand by my original opinion on your actions.
