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It has been clear since 2018 that the Federal Court of Justice is getting two new senates. A civil senate in Karlsruhe was established last autumn. Now the criminal senate in Leipzig is moving forward.
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After long difficulties in finding a suitable property, the additional criminal division of the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) in Leipzig is now taking shape. The 6th criminal senate will be set up on February 15, as BGH spokeswoman Dietlind Weinland announced on request.
The federal judges are to move into the same building in the Plagwitz district, which is currently home to the 5th criminal division. In order to create enough space for this, the Office of the Attorney General is moved from there to another domicile. The search for a suitable building had dragged on. The Federal Attorney General has a revision unit for each BGH criminal division.
The 5th and 6th Penal Senate will have a total of 35 employees, said Weinland. This includes the judges and other staff. The exact composition of the new Senate will be decided by the Presidium of the BGH at the end of January. What exactly the 6th Penal Senate will be responsible for has yet to be determined. The 5th Penal Senate has so far dealt with revisions against Berlin judgments and from the districts of the Higher Regional Courts of Brandenburg, Bremen, Dresden, Hamburg, Saarbrücken and Schleswig.
The Bundestag housekeepers had already approved the positions for two new senates in 2018 – a civil senate in Karlsruhe and a criminal senate in Leipzig. The XIII. Civil Senate in Karlsruhe had already been established on September 1, 2019. The expansion of the BGH location in Leipzig was also linked to its existence: in 1992 the Bundestag passed the so-called slip clause. After that, new civil senates should be established in Karlsruhe; for each new civil senate, an existing criminal senate should slide to Leipzig. At the beginning of last year, the FDP faction in the Bundestag asked whether the sliding clause was fair enough to build a new criminal senate in Leipzig instead of moving one of the existing ones from Karlsruhe. The federal government considers the slip clause to be fulfilled with the establishment of the new Senate in Leipzig.
The BGH is heavily burdened overall, President Bettina Limperg has long been calling for relief in the number of cases. The establishment of the two new senates does not, however, solve the court’s problems. Instead, she particularly suggests restricting access to the BGH.
dpa / ast / LTO editorial office
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