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The UK’s system of proscription, which operates under Part II of the Terrorism Act 2000, provides for a range of special counter-terrorism offences. These facilitate the criminalisation of anyone associating with a banned organisation in order to prevent that group from organising openly in society. The proscription of Palestine Action in July 2025 followed a break in at RAF Brize Norton, an embarrassing security lapse for the UK Government, which saw some of the group’s members spray paint military aircraft. This marks a new departure in UK counter-terrorism law, in which a direct-action protest group which primarily engages in property damage which disrupts military cooperation and the arms trade with Israel in order to highlight its “serious violations of international law”, is treated as a terrorist entity.

The powers of proscription within UK counter-terrorism law are exceptionally broadly drafted. They allow the Home Secretary to put before Parliament a ban on any group that she believes to be involved in terrorism. This is connected to a definition of terrorism which encompasses causing or threatening “serious damage to property” in a manner designed, amongst other ends, to influence government policy and to advance a political cause. By the letter of the statute, there is no need for a group to engage in or promote the terrorisation of significant sections of society through extreme uses of violence to be proscribed. The potential to apply the letter of this law to protest movements was acknowledged long before this case, but government ministers insisted that this flexibility was necessary to enable them to respond to emergent national security threats.

One of the leading members of the group, Huda Ammori, launched a legal challenge against the ban. The High Court’s judgment in R (Ammori) v Secretary of State for the Home Department, in February 2026, which found the ban to be unlawful, marked a notable success for Palestine Action. This decision, which demonstrated judicial disquiet with the breadth of discretion being asserted by the Executive and emphasised the consequences of proscription for Articles 10 and 11 ECHR, was covered on this blog here. The UK Government immediately appealed, and this week, a special five-judge panel of the Court of Appeal reversed the High Court’s decision. In this post, we consider the application of human rights standards in this judgment, the Court’s treatment of the justifications for the ban advanced by the UK Government and the judicial deference asserted towards national security assessments. Throughout this case, the Court creates an impression of judicial scrutiny, but one so lacking in substance as to embolden even more far reaching uses of executive powers in the future.

The “Balance” Between Rights and Security

Like almost all counter-terrorism measures, this case has been framed as a clash between rights and security. This is problematic, because the metaphor of balance evokes notions of common sense, recasting the exorbitant nature of the government’s discretionary powers as moderate and constrained. In so doing, it cedes a considerable amount of ground to the state, as the qualified rights at issue are contorted to accommodate security concerns. Moreover, focusing on rights arguments gives succour to suggestions that embedded human rights protections constitute a threat to the maintenance of security. The High Court was live to the risks of a judgment in which rights thwarted security claims; it looked beyond rights into the nature of the discretionary powers. The Court of Appeal promptly dismisses those concerns and devotes the weight of its analysis to rights issues.

The Court of Appeal’s judgment is beset with tensions when it comes to rights analysis. The Court is eager to say that the Home Secretary did conduct a proper evaluation of the rights issues at stake in a ban (at [78]). But the fact that any such consideration was cursory is underlined by the Home Secretary continuing to insist that there was no need to find that Article 10 and 11 are even engaged because of the operation of Article 17 “abuse of rights” provision. The Court ultimately has to inform the Home Secretary that Palestine Action’s aims, “such as opposing genocide, opposing Israel’s actions in Gaza, and support for Palestinians and the Palestinian cause”, are not “properly to be regarded” as abuses of the Convention’s protections (at [95]) and that the “rights of many peaceful and lawful protesters are affected by proscription” (at [96]). That this message still needs to be delivered by the Court reflects the extent to which the UK government’s assessment was skewed.

For the High Court (at [138]), the assessment of the proportionality of the state’s intervention into the operation of these rights was an exercise weighted in favour of the executive’s assessment; “the court must permit some latitude to the Home Secretary given that she has both political and practical responsibility to secure public safety”. But this did not preclude judicial oversight, or the conclusion (at [140]) that “the nature and scale of Palestine Action’s activities … has not yet reached the level, scale and persistence that would justify the application of the criminal law measures that are the consequence of proscription, and the very significant interference with Convention rights.”

For the Court of Appeal, however, the steer on these issues had been set by the UK Supreme Court in its ABJ decision, which came after the High Court’s decision in Ammori. Lord Reed had made it clear in ABJ that judicial oversight operated in a strictly curtailed manner when it came to banning groups (at [106]):

Deciding where and how to balance the value of freedom of expression against the need to combat terrorism is a highly sensitive matter falling primarily within the responsibility of the elected national authorities. Judicial supervision … has to respect the institutional expertise and constitutional legitimacy underlying the judgment made by those authorities by according them a correspondingly wide margin of appreciation.

Having conducted a confused analysis which combines elements of the “margin of appreciation” and “European consensus” from Strasbourg case law, the Court of Appeal effectively throws its hands up and declares that the Supreme Court has ceded everything beyond a notional role to the Home Secretary (at [116]):

The Home Secretary is thus better placed than the court to adjudicate the balance of the various rights and interests engaged in the context of national security. Whilst the court remains the ultimate arbiter, the Home Secretary should be accorded a wide margin of appreciation (or respect) in making her judgment about whether the objectives of the Proscription Decision are sufficiently important to justify the limitation of fundamental rights, whether there is a rational connection between the Proscription Decision and those objectives, whether a less intrusive measure could have been used, and whether a fair balance has been struck between the relevant ECHR rights of the individuals and others affected and the interests of the community, in so far as the balancing exercise involves bringing the public interest factors relied on by the Home Secretary into account.

Under those conditions, “ultimate arbiter” equates to legal fiction.

The Court of Appeal is left with the task of agreeing with the Home Secretary’s analysis that the group should be banned. It palpably struggles to provide a convincing argument as to why a ban represents a “fair balance” between the rights in question and the security interest asserted by the UK Government. The Court (at [149]) uses the following formulation to describe the activity of the group: “Palestine Action characterises itself as a non-violent ‘direct action protest group’ which follows in the footsteps of the suffragettes, and the campaigns against apartheid and the Iraq war”. It then goes on to dispute this with an account of the “panic” resultant from the use of pyrotechnics and smoke bombs (at [150]) and an Annex highlighting the use of sledgehammers and spray paint.

Direct action protest frequently involves undertaking criminal action as a way of drawing attention to what are perceived to be greater wrongs. But there is a qualitative distinction between the use of spray paint and smoke bombs to cause short-term panic and the use of indiscriminate gun and bomb attacks to cause terror. Counter-terrorism law has slipped its moorings. The Court has to perform the most dubious reconceptualization of historical campaigns of political violence to attempt to sustain its conclusion that nothing untoward is happening (at [205]):

It is, nonetheless, a fundamental mistake to overlook the fact that Palestine Action overtly promotes unlawful violence amounting to terrorism. It is not, as it claims, a direct action civil disobedience protest group like the suffragettes operating transparently in the open. It is a covert organisation that operates using secret cells to avoid the detection and prosecution of those using violence to destroy the property of third parties. Palestine Action’s activities have caused injury as well as property damage.

Suffragettes organised clandestinely, bombed the home of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and threw a hatchet at the Prime Minister in pursuit of the right to vote for women, but because these events could be managed without recourse to counter-terrorism measures, the Court of Appeal is either unaware of this foundational history or has opted to whitewash these activities to sustain its narrative.

Proscription vs The Ordinary Criminal Law

The casual disregard for the exceptionality of counter-terrorism law is further underlined by the Court of Appeal’s approach to a key element of the proportionality test— namely, whether any measures less intrusive than proscription were available to the government and the authorities to confront Palestine Action. On the face of it, the Court of Appeal appears to engage in an extensive and rigorous examination of whether “less intrusive measures could have been used”; however, this façade crumbles upon closer inspection.

It was submitted on behalf of Ammori that proscription was unnecessary as the ordinary criminal law was readily available. Indeed, the ordinary criminal law has been used extensively to prosecute members of Palestine Action. Despite this, the Court was highly dismissive of the idea that the ordinary criminal law was sufficient to confront Palestine Action, finding instead at [138] that, proscription would “be beneficial in haltering or hindering Palestine Action’s terrorist activities in a holistic way that could not be achieved otherwise under the existing legislation”.

At every opportunity, the Court of Appeal was keen to remind us of the utility of proscription to disrupt Palestine Action’s terrorist activity. Heavy emphasis therefore was placed on operational utility. But this is not the same as “necessity” and ECHR case law makes it clear that while “necessary” under the Convention does not mean “indispensable”, restrictions on freedom of expression and association must, nevertheless, address a “pressing social need” in the sense that any measure must be more than merely “admissible, ordinary, useful, reasonable, or desirable”. Yet the judgment makes no reflection on the notion of “pressing social need.” Instead the judgment also made clear that a significant margin of appreciation should be afforded to the Home Secretary in making this appraisal.

This conclusion regarding the operational effectiveness of proscription is aided and abetted by the Court’s earlier rejection in the judgment that the fact that only a very small number of Palestine Action’s actions met the definition of terrorism under section 1 of the 2000 Act. This point was pivotal to the High Court, noting that “the proscription decision was based on 385 actions committed over 5 years, only three of which were categorised as terrorist incidents” (at [148]). The Court also noted that the three terrorist incidents were not “disowned or condemned by Palestine Action” and despite this small number, the court, nevertheless, concluded at [163] that:

it was permissible for the Home Secretary (and, therefore, is permissible for us), in considering Palestine Action’s characteristics and activities, to consider the entirety of Palestine Action’s activities, not just its activities classified as terrorist.

The reason given for this was that:

whilst the purpose of proscription is to prevent acts of terrorism, in deciding whether to proscribe the Home Secretary must assess the risk of future acts of terrorism. All of an organisation’s activities, such as recruitment, fundraising, radicalisation and all terrorist and non-terrorist activities may be relevant to that assessment.

The judgment then meanders into a rumination of “the nature of Palestine Action”, rejecting the idea of it as a “transparent non-violent direct action protest group”. Instead, it finds that:

First, Palestine Action’s activities are planned and undertaken secretly with the objective of avoiding detection…Secondly, the members of Palestine Action do not vouch their sincerity by accepting the penalties imposed by the law. Thirdly, on a fair analysis, Palestine Action has little or nothing in common with the suffragettes or the anti-apartheid or Iran War protest groups.

The cumulative effect of this ahistorical narrative is to construct a perception of Palestine Action as extensively engaged in terroristic activity and proscription was necessary to disrupt this activity, notwithstanding the fact that only 0.78% of its activities met the definition of terrorism on the basis that they constituted serious damage to property. This 0.78% figure is, according to the Court, irrelevant and, accordingly, proscription is proportionate.

Diminishing Legal and Political Accountability

There is an irony in the Court of Appeal minimising its scrutiny role so severely on grounds which include the government’s “democratic” competence, given the lack of regard the ruling shows for democratic scrutiny and political accountability more broadly and which leaves the ruling undermining both legal and political accountability in the national security domain.

First, the Court dismisses as irrelevant the severe obstruction to meaningful parliamentary scrutiny of the proscription of Palestine Action. The proscription measure had been placed in an unamendable order with Palestine Action lumped with other obviously dangerous organisations. This meant that parliamentarians could only vote against proscribing Palestine Action if they were prepared to assist overtly violent organisations in avoiding proscription. The Court of Appeal holds the door clearly open for future parliamentary obstruction in this area by emphasising this kind of antidemocratic behaviour on the part of the government should make no difference in determining the level of judicial deference that should be afforded it (at [108]).

Second, underpinning the deep deference in the ruling is a rejection of the democratically-assigned role to judges with regards to proscription as well as national security powers more broadly in recent decades. During legislative scrutiny of the Terrorism Bill introducing permanent proscription powers, the Government assured Parliament not only that proscription decisions would only be made in highly exceptional circumstances but that any proscription decision would be “subject to proper judicial adjudication” (Column 156) and “tested through the judicial process” (Column 225).

Indeed, such assurances formed part of many made from this period onwards, where Parliament consented to legislating for evermore broad new terrorism powers post 9/11, under the proviso that courts would be responsible for ensuring such powers would not be abused. From judicial authorisation of bulk surveillance warrants, to judicial review of Terrorism Prevention and Investigatory Measures to judicial permission required for Temporary Exclusion Orders, Parliament has explicitly authorised the inclusion of judicial oversight across the national security state. It is precisely this judicialisation of national security oversight which was used to justify lancing the heart of natural justice in the UK through allowing the expansion of secret courts, to empower judges to pick apart the details of security sensitive evidence.

Yet, the continual democratic mandating of judges to play this integral role in national security matters goes entirely unacknowledged in the Court of Appeal’s articulation of its constitutional role, instead judicial institutional competence is presented as essentially absent in this domain.

Third, as the analysis above makes clear, the ruling is in essence a rejection of the role democratically assigned to the judiciary by the Human Rights Act 1998. As we have seen, not only are national security questions to be ceded to government due its unquestioned competence, but the Court of Appeal upholds such as a wide latitude to be afforded to the government on the fair balance of rights, the court’s is confined to that of ‘rubber stamp’ (to borrow the language of the powerful dissent of Lord Leggatt in Shvidler precisely in rejecting the Supreme Court’s wide latitude approach to proportionality now emulated by the Court of Appeal ([256])

In this way, the Court of Appeal’s contribution to diminishing legal accountability with respect to national security not only leaves us with broad powers evermore untethered to the legal constraints Parliament was promised but is built on a logic that undermines political accountability in this context.

What’s more, this has occurred at a time when alarm bells have recently been rung regarding threats to such political accountability, with senior political figures previously linked to the Intelligence and Committee having released a report detailing repeated government obstruction of scrutiny work.

A Constitutionally Concerning Future

In the conclusion of its judgment, the Court of Appeal states this (at [207]):

Ultimately, we have had to balance the free speech and freedom of assembly rights of individuals against the rights of third parties and the national security of the communities of the United Kingdom. We have done so by applying well-established legal principles, allowing the appropriate latitude to the decision that Parliament entrusted the Home Secretary to make. The Home Secretary had both the institutional competence and the democratic accountability to make that decision.

In other words, while the ban might have been a “highly controversial” decision (at [204]) and maybe “borderline” (at [108]), we are told that Parliament has given wide powers to the Home Secretary, and the Court is simply recognising that reality. No mention is made of its long held constitutional role with regards to rights, or its democratically-assigned role with respect to so many national security powers, including proscription.

The result of the ruling, and its lop-sided account of the separation of powers, is to remove meaningful legal constraint on the Home Secretary’s capacity to proscribe a group for operational effectiveness reasons, even if that group only has minimal engagement with activities that satisfy the definition of terrorism, as well as with respect to invasive national security powers more broadly. Not only this, but by so flippantly dismissing the role of Parliament in assigning the judiciary reviewing powers, and scrutinising the Home Secretary’s proscription decision, the Court of Appeal has sanctioned the erosion of legislative guardrails from the proscription process and national security decision-making as a whole. Once again, the UK has placed its faith in its “good chaps” to exercise their broad discretionary powers with restraint. Such blind faith is not merely misguided, it is fundamentally at odds with essential constitutional principles such as the rule of law and separation of powers.

The post The Judiciary Exits the Scene appeared first on Verfassungsblog.

Heute stellte Irene Khan, UN-Sonderberichterstatterin für das Recht auf freie Meinungsäußerung, ihren Bericht zur Lage in Deutschland vor. Sie sieht sich darin unter anderem besorgt über den zunehmenden Druck auf die Wissenschaftsfreiheit. Anlass, einen Fall neu in den Blick zu nehmen, der zu Unrecht aus der öffentlichen Debatte verschwunden ist.

Im November 2022 holte das Max-Planck-Institut für ethnologische Forschung den renommierten Anthropologen Ghassan Hage von der Universität Melbourne als Gastprofessor nach Halle. Knapp anderthalb Jahre später, im Februar 2024, kündigte die Forschungseinrichtung ihm fristlos. Sie warf dem in Beirut geborenen australischen Wissenschaftler vor, sich auf Twitter antisemitisch geäußert zu haben. Dies sei mit den Werten der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft unvereinbar. Ghassan Hage wehrte sich gegen die Vorwürfe vor dem Arbeitsgericht Halle – bis jetzt ohne Erfolg. Die zuständige Kammer erklärte die Kündigung im Dezember 2024 für rechtmäßig, die Berufungsverhandlung steht aus. Um die Kündigung auf rechtliche Füße zu stellen, geht das erstinstanzliche Urteil im Fall Prof. Ghassan Hage ./. Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e.V. einen folgenreichen Schritt. Es weitet den arbeitsrechtlichen Tendenzschutz von wissenschaftlichen Betrieben auf die von der Institution vertretenen politischen Positionen aus. Äußerungen von Wissenschaftler*innen, die diese herausfordern, avancieren damit zum Kündigungsgrund. Das ist nicht nur juristischer Unfug, sondern eine Einschränkung der Wissenschaftsfreiheit. Auch die Max-Planck-Gesellschaft sollte daran kein Interesse haben.

Der Fall Ghassan Hage

Der Fall Hage fügt sich in eine Reihe von Verfahren ein, die die gesellschaftlich zulässigen Positionen zum Israel-Palästina-Konflikt arbeitsrechtlich verhandeln. Im vorliegenden Fall geht es um mehrere Veröffentlichungen Hages auf Twitter. In ihnen kritisierte er den Terrorangriff der Hamas vom 7. Oktober 2023 vor dem Hintergrund der langjährigen Besatzungspolitik des israelischen Staates sowie die tödliche Gewalt der israelischen Regierung in Gaza. Darunter ist auch ein längeres, von ihm selbst verfasstes Gedicht.

Die Zeitung „Die Welt“ warf Ghassan Hage aufgrund dieser Posts „Israelhass“ vor. Daraufhin kündigte ihm die Max-Planck-Gesellschaft mit der Begründung, die von Hage verbreiteten Ansichten zum Israel-Palästina-Konflikt seien antisemitisch und israelfeindlich. In einer öffentlichen Stellungnahme heißt es, allgemeiner formuliert,die Äußerungen seien „mit den Grundwerten der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft nicht vereinbar.“

Entsprechend stritten die Parteien in der Sache darüber, ob die Äußerungen antisemitisch seien. Die Kammer aber umging den Antisemitismusvorwurf und die Auseinandersetzung mit Antisemitismusdefinitionen. Sie erklärte stattdessen in der Urteilsbegründung das Existenzrecht Israels selbst zum geschützten Wert der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. Die Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, so die Richter, „stellt das Existenzrecht Israels nicht in Frage und erlaubt dies auch niemand anderem in seinen Instituten“ (Rn. 79). Das aber habe Hage unter anderem in seinem Gedicht getan. Seine Äußerungen, so das Gericht weiter, hätten „keine zulässige Kritik an Handlungen des Staates Israel [dargestellt], sondern einen Angriff auf den Staat Israel als solchen, dem als ‚Besatzer‘ und als ‚Projekt‘ schlicht die Existenz als Völkerrechtssubjekt und damit dessen staatliche Legitimität abgesprochen wird“ (Rn. 81). Dies sei als Kündigungsgrund ausreichend. Die deutsche Staatsräson entfaltet ihre Wirkung damit auch im Zivilrecht, wie schon Felix Hartmann in seinem Kommentar zum Urteil bemerkt.

Einschränkung der Mitbestimmung und Loyalitätspflicht

Rechtlich begründet wird dieser Schluss mit dem arbeitsrechtlichen Tendenzschutz (Rn. 73 ff). Dieser gilt für Betriebe, die nicht in erster Linie einen ökonomischen Zweck verfolgen, sondern auf die Verwirklichung grundrechtlich geschützter Werte ausgerichtet sind, zum Beispiel die politische Willensbildung oder wissenschaftliche Tätigkeit. Als Institution, die den Zweck der „Förderung der Wissenschaft“ im Namen trägt, fällt auch die Max-Planck-Gesellschaft unter den Tendenzschutz.

Laut ständiger Rechtsprechung des Bundesarbeitsgerichts können Tendenzbetriebe von Mitarbeiter*innen, die die inhaltliche und ideelle Ausrichtung des Unternehmens unmittelbar prägen (sogenannten Tendenzträger*innen) erhöhte Loyalität erwarten. Dazu gehören zum Beispiel Erzieher*innen in kirchlichen Einrichtungen, nicht aber angestelltes Putzpersonal. Der Tendenzschutz verstärkt damit die allgemeinen Rücksichtnahmepflichten von Arbeitnehmer*innen (§ 241 Abs. 2). Dürfen Letztere durch ihr Verhalten dem Arbeitgeber keinen Schaden zufügen, müssen Tendenzträger*innen auch im Privaten die jeweils geschützten Werte beachten.

Im Fall Hage stellt sich erneut die Frage: Worin genau besteht der Tendenzschutz an wissenschaftlichen Betrieben? Die Rechtsprechung leitet die erhöhte Loyalitätspflicht aus dem Tendenzschutz im Betriebsverfassungsgesetz (§ 118 BetrVG) in Verbindung mit dem jeweiligen Grundrechtsschutz her. Für wissenschaftliche Betriebe ist das die Wissenschaftsfreiheit aus Art. 5 Abs. 3 GG. Weil die Arbeitnehmer*innenvertretung an öffentlichen Universitäten im Personalvertretungsgesetz geregelt ist, gilt der Tendenzschutz für sie nicht.

Die Max-Planck-Gesellschaft berief sich ursprünglich auf ihren Tendenzschutz, um gemäß § 118 BetrVG Forderungen nach innerbetrieblicher Mitbestimmung zurückzuweisen. Im Sinne der Wissenschaftsfreiheit sollte die Ausrichtung der Institute sowie Personalentscheidungen von den Institutsleitungen frei gestaltet werden können. Im vorliegenden Fall aber beruft sie sich auf den Tendenzschutz, um eine erhöhte Loyalitätspflicht einzufordern und so den Kündigungsschutz einzuschränken. Die Krux dabei: Die Kammer begründet zwar den Tendenzschutz mit Verweis auf den in der Satzung der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft eingeschriebenen „Zweck, die Wissenschaften zu fördern“. Die Loyalitätspflicht unterstellt sie dann aber auch mit Blick auf die politischen Positionen der Institution. Damit weitet die Kammer den Tendenzschutz unzulässig aus.

Staatsräson als wissenschaftliche Maxime?

Dabei sind sich Bundesarbeitsgericht sowie die Kommentarliteratur (Rn. 4–7) einig: Die Loyalitätspflicht bezieht sich nur auf das jeweils geschützte Grundrecht (BAG, 22.07.2014 – 1 ABR 93/12). Die Anforderungen müssen daher für jede einzelne Tendenz gesondert, autonom und spezifisch begründet werden (BAG 28.08.2003 – 2 ABR 48/02). Was kirchliche Arbeitgeber von ihren Mitarbeiter*innen fordern, wenn sie sich auf das Grundrecht auf freie Ausübung der Religion berufen (Art. 4 GG), kann also nicht auf die Loyalitätsansprüche übertragen werden, die politische Stiftungen oder Parteien gegenüber ihren Angestellten aus ihrem Grundrecht auf politische Willensbildung einfordern können (Art. 21 GG).

Die Richter in Halle hätten sich also ausführlich damit befassen müssen, wie die in der Rechtsprechung entwickelte Loyalitätspflicht konkret in Bezug auf die freie Wissenschaftsausübung auszulegen ist. Stattdessen unterstellt die Kammer einfach eine Analogie zu Betrieben, die im Bereich der Berichterstattung oder Meinungsäußerung tätig sind. In ihrer Urteilsbegründung übernimmt sie wörtlich ganze Passagen aus einer Entscheidung des Landesarbeitsgerichts Berlin-Brandenburg von April 2024 (5 Sa 894/23) zur Deutschen Welle. Das Gericht erklärte, mit Verweis auf den Tendenzschutz, die fristlose Kündigung eines Redakteurs aufgrund vermeintlich antisemitischer Äußerungen in sozialen Medien für rechtens. Ungeachtet der Unterschiede formuliert die Kammer in der Haller Urteilsbegründung eine Passage aus dem Urteil zur Deutschen Welle einfach um. Aus dem Passus „die Berichterstattung erfolgt in dem Bewusstsein, dass diese die Beziehungen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland zu ausländischen Staaten berührt“ wird kurzerhand folgende Formulierung: „Die Forschung des Beklagten erfolgt in dem Bewusstsein, dass diese die Beziehungen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland zu ausländischen Staaten berührt“. Die politische Rücksichtspflicht, die für die Deutsche Welle explizit in § 5 Abs. 3 des Deutsche-Welle-Gesetzes geregelt ist, setzt die Kammer für die Max-Planck-Gesellschaft einfach in die Welt.

Dabei bezieht sich der Tendenzschutz der Presse auf die inhaltliche, publizistische Ausrichtung zur Gewährleistung der freien Presse nach Art. 5 Abs. 1 Satz 2 GG. Kurz: Ein Zeitungsverlag kann von seinen journalistischen Mitarbeiter*innen verlangen, auch im Privaten die grundsätzliche Linie eines Blattes nach außen zu repräsentieren. Im Fall der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft geht es aber um die freie Ausübung der Wissenschaft, also um alles, so der Wissenschaftsbegriff des Grundgesetzes, was nach Inhalt und Form als ernsthafter, planmäßiger Versuch zur Ermittlung der Wahrheit anzusehen ist (BVerfG 29.5.1973, Rn. 87). Der Schutz einer bestimmten politischen Ausrichtung (Presse) unterscheidet sich wesentlich vom Schutz eines methodisch angeleiteten Prozesses der Erkenntnisgewinnung (Wissenschaft). Letzterer hängt von der Ergebnisoffenheit ab – und von der Möglichkeit, Ergebnisse zu widerlegen.

Gesteigerte Loyalitätspflichten kann die Max-Planck-Gesellschaft also nur in Bezug auf die geschützte Tendenz geltend machen, nämlich die Förderung der Wissenschaften durch die Unterhaltung von Forschungsinstituten. Im vorliegenden Fall hätte die Kammer entsprechend erörtern müssen, inwiefern Hages Äußerungen in den sozialen Medien die Max-Planck-Gesellschaft an der Ausübung des geschützten Zwecks – der Förderung der Wissenschaft – hindern.

Hier ließe sich zum Beispiel darüber nachdenken, ob Partnerschaften mit anderen Forschungseinrichtungen ein geschütztes Interesse sind, ob solche Partnerschaften durch private Aussagen der eigenen Mitarbeiter*innen in Gefahr geraten können und ob sich daraus ein berechtigter Kündigungsgrund ableiten lässt. Diesen Punkt hat die Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, die unter anderem mit israelischen Forschungseinrichtungen kooperiert, in ihrer gerichtlichen Einlassung selbst angedeutet.

Für dieses Argument spricht, dass die Zusammenarbeit mit anderen Einrichtungen für bestimmte Forschungsvorhaben wichtig ist – mitunter so wichtig, dass diese Vorhaben ohne die Kooperationspartner nicht mehr durchgeführt werden können. Aber ob ein Post auf einem privaten Social-Media-Profil die Kooperation mit anderen Institutionen tatsächlich gefährdet, hinge dann in erster Linie von der Kritikfähigkeit der Kooperationspartner*innen ab. Die Reaktion Dritter als Maßstab für die Rechtmäßigkeit einer Kündigung anzusetzen wäre mit Rechtsunsicherheit verbunden. So kann auch die Rufschädigung eines Arbeitgebers sinnvollerweise nicht von der Reaktion einer einzigen Zeitungsredaktion abhängen. Denn wenn Wissenschaftler*innen aufgrund öffentlicher Äußerungen gekündigt werden können, sobald Kooperationspartner*innen oder die Presse ihren Unmut ausdrücken, entsteht ein erheblicher Abschreckungseffekt, sich an öffentlichen Diskussionen zu beteiligen.

Förderung der Wissenschaft vs. Wissenschaftsfreiheit

Wie lässt sich also rechtfertigen, dass Forscher*innen im Namen der Förderung der Wissenschaft gekündigt werden? Die von der Kammer vorgenommene Grundrechtsabwägung (Rn. 85 ff.) gibt in dieser Frage wenig Aufschluss. Sie kündigt zwar an, das Grundrecht auf Wissenschaftsfreiheit gegen den Schutz der freien Meinungsäußerung abzuwägen – eine ernsthafte Auseinandersetzung sucht man aber vergeblich. Auch hier übernimmt die Kammer alle Formulierungen im relevanten Absatz (Rn. 87) wörtlich aus dem bereits erwähnten Urteil zur Deutschen Welle (hier: Rn. 67):

„Der Kläger ist als Tendenzträger der Beklagten auch im Hinblick auf seine Meinungsfreiheit verpflichtet, keine Äußerungen objektiv das Existenzrecht, ja die Existenz Israels an sich, in Abrede stellenden Charakters zu verbreiten“.

Laut Urteil kann die Max-Planck-Gesellschaft also verlangen, dass sich Wissenschaftler*innen nicht im Widerspruch zu den politischen Positionen der Institution – abgeleitet aus Stellungnahmen von Präsidenten und Institutsdirektoren – äußern. Das ist mehr, als der 1. FSV Mainz 05 von seinen Spieler*innen erwarten kann (vgl. ArbG Mainz, Urteil vom 12. Juli 2024 – 10 Ca 1411/23).

Wie sich diese Argumentation auf die Wissenschaftsfreiheit der Angestellten auswirkt, erörtern die Richter dabei nicht. Das liegt auch daran, dass das Gericht die Posts von Hage als rein private Äußerungen betrachtet und sie nicht in den Kontext seiner wissenschaftlichen Tätigkeit stellt. Dabei findet heute ein Großteil der Wissenschaftskommunikation in den sozialen Netzwerken statt. Es kann also nicht allein vom genutzten Medium darauf geschlossen werden, ob es sich um eine private Meinungsäußerung handelt oder um die Kommunikation wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnisse. Die Kammer hätte also nicht nur das Grundrecht auf freie Wissenschaft der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in den Blick nehmen müssen, sondern auch das von Ghassan Hage. Der Verweis auf die Wissenschaftsfreiheit entscheidet nicht die rechtliche Bewertung der Aussagen – auch die Wissenschaftsfreiheit unterliegt Schranken. Er verdeutlicht aber, dass es hier um mehr geht als um die Kündigung aufgrund privater Aussagen. Denn der Tendenzschutz wird ad absurdum geführt, wenn eine Institution im Namen der Wissenschaftsfreiheit die freie öffentliche Kommunikation der eigenen Forschung einschränkt.

Recht vs. Wissenschaft

Das allerdings hätte die Bereitschaft des Gerichts vorausgesetzt, sich mit der Eigenlogik der wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisproduktion auseinanderzusetzen, wie sie auch in der Rechtsprechung des Bundesverfassungsgerichts zur Wissenschaftsfreiheit an öffentlichen Hochschulen zum Tragen kommt (insbesondere BVerfG, 22.05.1975).  In den Worten der Professorin für Praktische Philosophie Elif Özmen: Bei der Gewährung der Wissenschaftsfreiheit darf es keine Rolle spielen, ob „wissenschaftliche Meinungen, Theorien oder Personen krude, unliebsam, unbequem, bigott oder reaktionär sind, sich als unvernünftig, unbegründet oder abwegig erweisen oder als beunruhigend, schockierend oder verletzend empfunden werden.“ Das heißt auch, dass die Wissenschaft betreffende Grundsatzfragen von der Wissenschaftsgemeinschaft entschieden werden sollten – nicht von Gerichten.

In diesem – wie in vielen Verfahren – ringen wissenschaftliche und juridische Logiken der Wissensproduktion um Autorität. Vordergründig verhandelt das Gericht ausschließlich die Rechtmäßigkeit der Kündigung. Tatsächlich aber entscheidet es dabei auch derzeit kontrovers geführte wissenschaftliche Diskussionen. Diese betreffen gegenwärtige Formen des Antisemitismus, die Einordnung der Gewalt in Gaza sowie Analysen des israelischen Rechtssystems. Dabei übertrumpft die Staatsräson regelmäßig die wissenschaftliche Expertise von Konflikt- und Nahostforscher*innen.

Man könnte es bei der Analyse dieses Urteils dabei belassen, auf die Erkenntnisse der kritischen Rechtsforschung zu verweisen, die uns davor warnen, im Gericht ermittelte Wahrheiten für bare Münze zu nehmen. Doch es geht im Fall Ghassan Hage um mehr als die Frage, wie sich juridische Wahrheitsfindung von wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnisproduktion unterscheidet. Versehen mit staatlicher Sanktionsmacht, haben gerichtliche Interventionen in die wissenschaftliche Diskussion zum Israel-Palästina-Konflikt weitreichende Folgen für alle Wissenschaftler*innen, die sich daran beteiligen. Sie machen jede Äußerung zu einem Risiko.

Dies gilt insbesondere für internationale Wissenschaftler*innen, deren Aufenthaltsstatus oder Sozialleistungen häufig an das Anstellungsverhältnis gebunden sind. Die Sanktionierung Einzelner schafft darüber hinaus ein Klima der Verunsicherung unter Wissenschaftler*innen und Studierenden und provoziert Selbstzensur. Der öffentlichen Debatte geht damit wichtige Expertise verloren, die zu einem differenzierten Austausch beitragen könnte.

Das Arbeitsgericht Halle hätte die Gelegenheit gehabt, sich ernsthaft mit der Frage zu befassen, worin genau die erhöhte Loyalitätspflicht gegenüber wissenschaftlichen Einrichtungen besteht – und so die Wissenschaftsfreiheit in Deutschland stärken können. Stattdessen weitet es den Tendenzschutz auf politische Positionen aus und schränkt so die Wissenschaftsfreiheit ein. Das ist nicht nur juristisch unhaltbar, sondern auch Ausdruck wissenschaftspolitischer Kurzsichtigkeit.

Ich danke Franziska Duda für ihre Unterstützung bei der Recherche für diesen Text.

The post Forschung unter Vorbehalt appeared first on Verfassungsblog.

Assessing Indira Gandhi’s breed of politics, Ashis Nandy noted that Gandhi enjoyed pursuing her political goals via pure politics, defined as “a politics characterised by constant political-cost calculations, assumption of non-synergy and a single-minded pursuit of self-interest by all actors in the system.” (At the Edge of Psychology, 114) The state, and the political system built around it, are then meant to serve a singular purpose: power maximisation and its retention, irrespective of the ethics of the means adopted. The constitutional limits on power, its design for power-sharing, and the achievement of certain positive socio-economic outcomes for the collective benefit of the society take the backseat. What is going on in India currently is eerily similar.

The 2026 West Bengal State Election and Its Aftermath

Last month, in a set of crucial state elections, the BJP was able to win the election in the state of West Bengal for the first time. It dislodged the government of a regional party – the Trinamool Congress – that has presented a strong opposition to the BJP for the last decade by also sending a high number of legislators to both Houses of Parliament. There are several questions around the fairness and integrity of the elections, as they took place against the backdrop of a large-scale electoral roll revision exercise that caused massive disenfranchisement. Negligible legal opportunities were provided to the individuals whose names were deleted from the rolls, while the Supreme Court virtually legitimised this exercise by noting that those whose names had been deleted could vote in the next election once they defend their rights in a tribunal. After the election, several reports have emerged that question the integrity of the electoral voting machines, raising tough questions about the health of electoral democracy in India.

TMC, like most of the other regional parties in India, is not a well-organised political party and largely works on a presidential model by building electoral campaigns around its leader, Mamata Banerjee. As Banerjee also lost her election, a major faction of the elected TMC legislators separated itself from the party leadership in the state legislature, though retaining their allegiance to the party in order to avoid disqualification under the Indian anti-defection law.

Beyond this intra-party struggle for power, a more concerning set of events took place at the central level, in both the Houses of Parliament. In the 2024 general elections, TMC had won elections on 29 seats out of 42 constituencies of the state of West Bengal, and thus held a major role in the parliamentary opposition against the BJP. Immediately after this electoral victory in the state election, the BJP has engineered the defection of 20 of these legislators in order to boost its numbers. They merged with an unrecognised party and then joined the BJP-led alliance. Readers would recall that earlier this year, the BJP had attempted to introduce a constitutional amendment bill to redraw the electoral map of India, and it failed due to its inability to muster a two-thirds majority in Parliament. In addition, the BJP is also attempting to enact an amendment that would introduce synchronised national and state elections in India, in the hopes that it could sideline state-specific issues and victory at both the national and state levels could be achieved by projecting a single Prime Ministerial face. These defections must be viewed in light of the attempts to meet the constitutional majority requirement for passing these amendments.

A similar set of defections is in play for mustering a majority in the Upper House of Parliament. The members of the Upper House are elected by the state legislative assemblies, and therefore, as the BJP has now won the state government in West Bengal, it has engineered the resignation of multiple TMC upper house legislators, so that they can either be replaced or re-elected under the BJP’s sponsorship.

These are not the sole incidents. A few months back, a faction of 7 upper house legislators elected from the state of Punjab under the banner of another opposition party – Aam Aadmi Party – had transferred their allegiance to the BJP. And currently, an attempt to secure the defection of a similar number of legislators is underway from a regional party in Maharashtra – Shiva Sena (UBT) – which has already witnessed a split in favour of the BJP in the recent past.

What these events show is that, beyond the integrity of the elections, even the sanctity of the voters’ preference is increasingly lost in the Indian state. Upon failing to secure victory at the booth, the BJP has been comfortably deploying other means to ensure that an artificial majority could be created. The news reports, as well as the history of defections in India, show that the ruling parties have used the carrot and stick approach in manufacturing such artificial majorities. If a bribe fails to convert an elected legislator, the central government conveniently frames false charges against them. Once they switch, the charges are either dropped or pushed to the back burner.

The Uselessness of the Anti-Defection Law

The Tenth Schedule to the Indian Constitution is meant to check exactly such actions. It proscribes the defection of legislators, and it mandates that once an individual is elected on a party ticket or independently, they are mandatorily disqualified if they switch their affiliation. However, as the individual empowered to decide such petitions is the House Chairperson, they tend to sit on such disqualification petitions or don’t admit them at all. While the provision of judicial review remains, the pace at which such a review takes place ensures that no ethical and constitutionally-compliant outcome is achieved before the term of the House itself is over, leaving the matter infructuous.

Moreover, the defecting legislators have increasingly come to rely on an exception to the anti-defection law to argue the legality of their actions. The Tenth Schedule provides that if the original political party of the legislators under question decides to merge with another political party, they can be saved from disqualification if such a merger is also approved by two-thirds of the elected legislators. As this description would clearly show, this requirement of the approval of a two-thirds majority is supposed to operate as a check against the decision of their original party to merge with another one. It is not supposed to operate as a trigger to a merger. However, in all the above-discussed episodes, involving AAP, TMC, and SS(UBT), the legislators have justified their actions by arguing that their faction constitutes the two-thirds majority and thus, they are constitutionally allowed to defect, irrespective of whether their original party has initiated such a merger. This is a blatant violation of the Constitution, and the House Chairpersons, rather than upholding the law, have acted complicitly in approving this interpretation.

Concluding Remarks

The BJP has been trying extremely hard to secure the required number in the two Houses of Parliament. In a different election for the upper house from the state of Madhya Pradesh, it was able to collude with the returning officer in charge of handling nominations to cancel the nomination of an opposition candidate. Given the party composition in the MP legislative assembly, it was certain that the opposition candidate would easily win the election. However, with her nomination cancelled, the BJP gained another seat illegally. In vain, urgent interventions were sought from the Election Commission and the Supreme Court.

In most of the democracy and constitutional law scholarship, these two institutions have been heralded as the guardians of Indian democracy and the protectors of the Constitution. The veil is off, and their vulnerabilities and the tendency to capitulate are now clearly visible. Guardians no more.

It is high time that these institutions, including the cognitively awake members from the BJP as well, realise that elections and the theatre of electoral democracy work as a safety valve in a polity. The logic of elections is nothing but to determine who gets the legitimate right to govern the citizens. The legal processes, including the constitution, built around this notion aim to ensure a sense of certainty and fairness. Once that sense is lost, which is increasingly on the verge of collapsing, laws tend to lose their appeal, and much could be threatened. An overall sense of injustice and unfairness cannot be allowed to have free rein. The call to the politics of resistance by Rahul Gandhi, Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, is hopeful and scary at the same time. While it shows that there is an increasing recognition that the entire constitutional system has virtually been captured by the BJP, and thus the political fight has to change its language and move beyond the institutions to the streets, it also depicts the evidence of the failure of India’s constitutional project.

At the end of the Constituent Assembly deliberations in 1949, BR Ambedkar had argued that the newly introduced constitutional system was, among other things, meant to bring order to Indian politics. For it to operate well, he argued that it is important that politics is pursued while remaining within the four corners of the constitution, which would provide (hopefully) equal opportunities and a fair ground:

“If we wish to maintain democracy not merely in form, but also in fact, what must we do? The first thing in my judgment we must do is to hold fast to constitutional methods of achieving our social and economic objectives. It means we must abandon the bloody methods of revolution. It means that we must abandon the method of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and satyagraha. When there was no way left for constitutional methods for achieving economic and social objectives, there was a great deal of justification for unconstitutional methods. But where constitutional methods are open, there can be no justification for these unconstitutional methods. These methods are nothing but the Grammar of Anarchy and the sooner they are abandoned, the better for us.”

He justified anarchy when “there was no way left for constitutional methods”. What the BJP is doing is recreating this situation. I hope that better sense prevails and the stakeholders change their approach to politics. Pure politics is a clear route to instability.

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