Legal Miscellaneous VI

Terror

By Ferdinad von Schirach

This play presents a moral and constitutional dilemma. The decision made by a figther pilot put in an extraordinary situation. The Constitutional Court prevents him from being ordered to do what he did (which is also what his life was prepared for) and that everyone expected him to do.

The jury thus faces a "difficult case", which is so much because of the media pressure that one can imagine and because what is requested is not only a criminal trial, but also a consideration of constitutional principles, as well as weighing the moral implications of the decision taken by the accused.

The play can be seen the same from the criminal perspective as from the constitutional, in this second possible reading it illustrates both the density of the principles and the limit of an abstract constitutionality trial in a tragic case, because as it is said in one of the possible verdicts, to the pilot Lars Koch "The right, the Constitution and the courts left him alone with his decision".