The Bench · 15 February 2006 · The Federal Constitutional Court, Germany

May a state shoot down a hijacked plane? The German ruling of 2006

What is your ruling?

The case

Told from where the person who decided stood. In the game each line is written into a drawing as you tap.

1. After the attacks of September 2001, Germany passes a law for the worst case: a hijacked airliner, aimed at a city.
2. The law says the armed forces may shoot the plane down if that is the only way to save the people on the ground.
3. The passengers would die a few minutes sooner than they will anyway. Many more people might live.
4. Six citizens ask the constitutional court to strike the law out. You are the court.

The two calls

• The law stands.A few minutes of life, against a city. The state may now kill its own innocent citizens to save others.
• The law is void.The state may not kill the innocent. If the day comes, the state must watch the plane reach the city.

Make the call in the game →Free. No account. Two minutes.

What happened

Void. The court ruled that the state may not kill innocent people on board to save others.

The judges held that a life is protected equally however little of it is left, and that the passengers could not be treated as part of the weapon.

It is the question at the junction, answered by a court.

Source: Bundesverfassungsgericht, judgment of 15 February 2006, 1 BvR 357/05; Press Release No. 11/2006. www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/EN/2006/bvg06-011.html

How to read this

History is not an answer key. This page says what was done and what came of it. Whether it was right is the question the case leaves with you.

Where the game asks it

The same kind of question runs through The Junction (Whom would you sacrifice?), one of the nine journeys of the game.

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