The recent failure to secure parliamentary agreement on appointments to Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court has revealed significant fissures within the present governing coalition of CDU/CSU and SPD. With the SPD standing stoutly by their candidate Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf—a jurist of celebrated scholarly accomplishment by their own reckoning—the CDU/CSU remains fractious and noncommittal, fostering acrimony and disorder at the heart of statecraft. Leaders from various quarters now call for a reset of the nomination process, as trust in the established mechanisms wanes. While the SPD urges fairness and points to the procedural legitimacy of Brosius-Gersdorf’s nomination, the Union’s reluctance exposes deeper, unresolved strains. Even as parliamentary leaders attempt to maintain a veneer of stability in anticipation of autumn reforms, the very foundations of cooperation seem perilously unsteady. The controversy is further inflamed by the visible hand of church influence and the perilous arithmetic of a coalition government.

How disheartening—no, how illustrative—this spectacle is of the perils that arise when political bargaining, rather than principled and transparent procedures, dominate matters of such gravity as constitutional court appointments! The inability of government to coordinate effectively on so fundamental a question is the clearest demonstration of the limits of parliamentary majorities constructed from shifting alliances and backroom negotiations. We see before us not the steady hand of rule-based order, but the capricious—and at times wholly arbitrary—machinations of power. In this climate, the supposed objectivity and independence of the judiciary are put at risk, sacrificed on the altar of political calculation.

It is the very dictum of a free society that the law stands above transient party interests; that the selection of those tasked with fundamental legal interpretation should be shielded from the whims of political expediency. When the integrity of appointments to the highest court is entangled with the horse-trading and vetoes of coalition politics, already we have departed from the path of a rule-governed society. The proposed “early warning systems” to test parliamentary support for candidates are nothing more than attempts to rationalize what should be a straightforward process—a process, if it must exist at all, that should be open, clear, and conducted under principles that honor the separation of powers.

Let us not pretend that “broad support” manufactured through party accommodations is a substitute for genuine independence! The tragedy here is not simply a delay in appointments, but rather the unveiled fact that no legal or institutional schema is strong enough to restrain the apparatus of politics from imposing itself on the judiciary. This, my friends, is a grave warning: wherever central authority is given the power to decide such matters by political deal-making, the boundary between law and politics is blurred, and with it the foundation of liberal order.

It is well that we witness this fraying; perhaps it will serve as a lesson in the dangers of systems in which the state, rather than spontaneous and impersonal processes, becomes the great arbiter of every significant decision. If we truly cherish the rule of law, we must agitate for institutions that stand above faction and that protect individuals—and our most fundamental rights—against the ever-encroaching power of ruling coalitions. Only in this way can the guardians of our constitutional order remain truly independent and worthy of the task entrusted to them.