Politics & Governance / Law & Institutions / Judicial Systems

When Judges Play God: The Hidden Limits of Law and Democracy

Veröffentlichungen der Vereinigung der Deutschen Staatsrechtslehrer (VVDStRL, Vol. 34)

Gerd Roellecke, Christian Starck, Rupert Scholz, Eberhard Schmidt-Aßmann

What if the greatest danger to constitutional democracy is not a corrupt politician, but an unelected judge claiming to fight for justice? Most people assume that supreme court judges merely apply the law. The shocking reality is that courts routinely rewrite statutes, usurp legislative authority, and secretly replace democratic wills with their own subjective moral instincts. This breakdown tears down the romantic illusion of judicial supremacy through the historic 1975 Augsburg debates of the Association of German Constitutional Law Professors. Four legendary legal giants—Gerd Roellecke, Christian Starck, Rupert Scholz, and Eberhard Schmidt-Assmann—go to war over two fundamental questions: Can a judge legitimately defy written law, and should administrative courts have the power to paralyze modern infrastructure? Slide-by-slide, this session exposes: - The deadly myth of judicial intuition: Why a judge seeking justice outside written legislation creates arbitrary tyranny. - The four inviolable boundaries: Why courts must never touch parliament budget prerogatives or invent punitive analogies. - The illusion of judicial omnipotence: Why single-discipline legal judges are fundamentally unqualified to overrule specialized scientific and ecological planning. - The procedural antidote: How staged review and arbitrary thresholds prevent paralyzing lawsuits from halting an entire economy. About the authors and the work: Originating from the seminal conference records of the Association of German Constitutional Law Professors (VVDStRL, Vol. 34), this milestone work unites the intellects of Gerd Roellecke (distinguished legal philosopher and former rector of the University of Mannheim), Christian Starck (famed constitutional scholar and judge of the State Constitutional Court of Lower Saxony), Rupert Scholz (celebrated public law professor and former Federal Minister of Defense), and Eberhard Schmidt-Assmann (pioneering administrative law reformer at Heidelberg University). Together, their sharp clash lays bare the fragile line dividing genuine constitutional review from raw judicial usurpation.