Stuttgart (dpa / lsw) – Baden-Württemberg’s Minister of Justice Marion Gentges (CDU) accepts her defeat in the legal dispute with the judges over the appointment of the top post at the Higher Regional Court of Stuttgart (OLG). The Ministry of Justice is not appealing a decision by the Stuttgart Administrative Court, the Ministry of Justice announced in Stuttgart on Thursday. Gentges did not want to accept that the Presidential Council had rejected their candidate for the executive chair and made their own proposal. Her lawsuit, however, failed in mid-November. First the Südwestrundfunk had reported about it.
The judges’ selection committee will now be convened in the staffing process, said the spokeswoman for Gentges. The Judges Election Committee consists of 15 members, 7 judges, 6 deputies and a lawyer. The minister is also one of them, but has no voting rights. A candidate needs a two-thirds majority.
The process surrounding the OLG candidacy and the successor to Cornelia Horz is a rarity in recent judicial history. The previous Higher Regional Court President retired in May. Gentges had proposed Beate Linkenheil, department head in the ministry, for the post. The Presidential Council spoke out in favor of Andreas Singer, the President of the Stuttgart Regional Court. The FDP member was spokesman for the former Justice Minister Ulrich Goll (FDP).
The German Association of Judges in the Southwest had also criticized that Gentges had canceled the decades-long consensus on the tasks and powers of the Presidential Council.
