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Comment by wobbleblob | Hacker News Reader

How is it up to a politician to "allow" a prosecution? Shouldn't that be up to the court?

"Under an obscure paragraph of Germany’s criminal code, prosecution for insults against organs or representatives of foreign states requires both a notification from the offended party and an authorisation from the government."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/15/angela-merkel-a...

I’ve read that the underlying assumption here is basically that since such insults potentially damage the relationship between Germany and the foreign state, Germany is an injured party and as such involved in the process.

But it’s also just an ancient law …

and thats why they want to get rid of it

There's probably also the case where insulting certain other countries heads of state is just totally fine with the government, so they can ok those cases. ;)

You refer to it as ancient, but I just looked it up, and it seems it was last updated in 2014

How ancient can these laws be? The BRD is not that old.

The core of the laws is much older than the BRD, they were not re-invented from scratch after the war, rather re-established, actually. The penal code goes back to 1871 for Germany as a whole and is based on the earlier Prussian penal code of 1851.

The law itself is the main penal code of Germany and it is of course changed quite often. That specific provision has been unchanged since at least 1953 (though there has been a second subsection added). The original version from 1871 already contained it but worded differently.

That article contains a link with a better explanation of the law: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/14/obscure-german-...

Basically it's a holdover from the monarchy, and there are similar rules across much of europe for the same reason. It seems interesting that these laws hang on despite the massive changes to borders and governments in europe since the 1800's

No.

Courts do not prosecute people. They decide cases. The government (that is, the elected part) prosecutes people, at least in many cases. The prosecutor is either appointed by an elected official or elected directly. Therefore it is up to an elected official, either directly or indirectly, to decide whether or not to prosecute a case.

While this may be true in the US, most prosecutors are neither elected nor appointed by elected officials in Germany.

The prosecutors still are bound by instruction of their superiors (which at the end is the minster of justice, usually of that state). Sure, these instructions have bounds, but it can still lead to interference by political officials.

In the United States, criminal prosecution is up the the District Attorney. This is often an elected position. So, yes, it's sometimes up to a politician to decide whether to prosecute.

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