German court sanction for domestic deployment of the military
23 August 2012  The decision by the German Constitutional Court
to allow the army to carry out domestic military operations
marks a turning point in the history of the Federal Republic
similar to the passage of Emergency Laws in May 1968.  At that
time, the German parliament amended 28 articles of the
constitution to permit the government to suspend or restrict
basic democratic rights in the event of war, a domestic state of
emergency or a natural disaster. The Emergency Laws also allowed
the deployment of the German Army (Bundeswehr) domestically, but
only “in order to avert an imminent danger to the existence or
free democratic order of the Federation or a state,” or to
combat “organised armed insurgents.”  The judgment by the
Constitutional Court published last week (See: “German
Constitutional Court legalizes use of Army inside Germany“) goes
much further. It lowers the threshold for the use of the Army
domestically and permits it not only to