Thorsten Schleif

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Thorsten Schleif (2019)

Thorsten Schleif (born 1980 ) is a German magistrate . His book, published in 2019, entitled Judgment: Unjust: A Judge Unveils Why Our Justice Is Failing by Criticizing Conditions in German Courts, sparked wide media coverage across Germany.

Life

Schleif studied law at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn and has been a judge since 2007. After positions at the Düsseldorf Regional Court and in the administration of the Higher Regional Court , he was the sole investigating judge for the Dinslaken and Wesel local courts from 2014 to 2018 . He is currently chairman of the lay judge's court and youth judge at the Dinslaken district court. He is also involved in the training of trainee lawyers .

Schleif has two children and lives in Duisburg .

Book publication

In 2019, Schleif published the book Verdict: Unjust: A Judge Reveals Why Our Justice Is Failing . In it he certified that the judges had a mixture of insufficient self-confidence on the one hand and arrogance on the other. Inadequate training and equipment, dangerous overload with poor pay compared to large law firms and lack of transparency in promotions are grievances about which he no longer wants to remain silent. The rule of law is in a bad state and close to the abyss, the distrust of the population is growing. Criminals do not take the legal system more serious, criminal clans have now their own parallel - jurisdiction .

There are problems in finding suitable young people, and training and further education do not convey what is needed in professional life: "It is like working in the rescue service after a first aid course for the driver's license". Judges are hardly trained in statement psychology. For example, they are hardly more competent than lay people when it comes to assessing testimony, which means that “wrong judgments are predetermined”. They tended to overestimate themselves more than other professional groups. The independence of the judiciary is also less pronounced than in other European countries or the USA, and top positions in many federal states are occupied by the state government. Out of uncertainty and the fear of being brought up against legal errors by the Federal Court of Justice , mild penalties are often imposed, since overburdened public prosecutors' offices are less likely to appeal than dissatisfied defendants. This would often result in a suspended sentence being followed by a suspended sentence against recidivists, even though their probation should actually be revoked. The workload is extremely and unevenly distributed, as is the case with the police and the public prosecutor's office, the staffing levels are increasingly thin at all levels.

resonance

Thomas Hesse commented on RP Online , grinding judgments "hard, but clear and knowing about the state of the German judiciary". He writes precisely and objectively, builds up his description of the situation in a structured manner and reports factually from reality. In this way he makes a difficult topic comprehensible and goes "on - not emotion-free - sense of right and dull legal framework equally".

Thomas Fischer , on the other hand, described the book on Spiegel Online as "alarm cries". The book is not entirely "wrong", there are definitely weaknesses and undesirable developments in the criminal justice system, which, however, are neither new nor have "increased explosively". But they are not so simple and one-dimensional that they can be represented, explained or solved in this way.

The German Association of Judges did not want to respond to media inquiries about Schleif's allegations.

book

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Author profile of Thorsten Schleif , at the Münchner Verlagsgruppe . Retrieved December 13, 2019.
  2. ↑ Göran Schattauer: Settlement with Kuschel-Justiz "Powerful, comfortable, lazy to make decisions": Judge attacks colleagues sharply , Focus, October 20, 2019.
  3. ↑ a b "Judgment: unjust": Judge accuses German judiciary of arrogance and failure , Zeit Online, October 24, 2019.
  4. ^ "Judgment: unjust": Richter book goes tough with justice , beck-aktuell Nachrichten, Verlag CH Beck , October 25, 2019.
  5. ^ Justice: Judge accuses German judiciary of arrogance and failure , Focus, October 24, 2019.
  6. ↑ a b Thomas Hesse: Many listeners: Richter Schleif hits the nerve of the times , RP Online, November 1, 2019.
  7. ↑ a b NRW: Richter unpacks - and tells shocking things , Der Westen, October 15, 2019.
  8. ↑ Ann-Kathrin Löhnwitz: This is how the parallel justice of the clans in Germany works , WeltN24, November 26, 2019.
  9. ↑ Thorsten Schleif accuses: Richter settles with German justice: "You feel small and lost" , RTL, October 15, 2019.
  10. ↑ Book as general criticism: When a judge accuses the judiciary of failure , t-online.de, October 24, 2019
  11. ↑ Thomas Fischer: Best Selling Justice Failure: Richter Knallhart over the Abyss , Spiegel Online, November 21, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Schleif, Thorsten
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German magistrate and non-fiction author
DATE OF BIRTH 1980