[bladegash]

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.

[danuker]

> Especially if “doing it for fun”. That’s not admirable, it’s disturbing.

I see you are attempting to take away the "hacker" in "hacker news".

I see this as social engineering, for a good cause.

[bladegash]

Good cause according to who? The OP? You? How about the other people that have received and live with judgements from this official?

And sorry, but social engineering is pretty unethical if you ask me, and has nothing to do with the name of the site.

[danuker]

Exposing a corrupt judge is among the most noble goals a citizen can have. The more incentive judges have to act fairly, the better.

I am not sure you read the story correctly. But I'm pretty sure a judge will get due process - not abusive penalties.

[bladegash]

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).

[byecancer21]

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.

[bakuninsbart]

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.

[bladegash]

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”.

[byecancer21]

Different standards apply for judges within proceedings, especially those making decisions at the very top.

I did offer each offender a second chance, as I thought they might have learned from this. They chose not to take it.

The first instance judge had been given four chances even.

[bladegash]

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?

[byecancer21]

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.

[byecancer21]

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.

[bladegash]

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.

[midjji]

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.

[bladegash]

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.

[byecancer21]

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.

[bladegash]

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.