On crime and prosecutions Soon after taking office in 2009, Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger demanded that US courts could not seek the death penalty for terrorists
Zacarias Moussaoui and
Ramzi Binalshibh in return for receiving evidence provided by German investigators. In order to verify that the US government keeps its word, she teamed up with the Foreign Ministry to send German observers to monitor the trial in New York. Under legislation introduced by Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger following a wave of revelations about
Catholic priest abusing minors in 2011, Germans who were sexually abused as children today have as long as 30 years after they turn 21 to bring accusations in court; the previous
statute of limitations on civil abuse cases was three years. The minister also urged the church to compensate victims and participate in a "round table" with their representatives.
On data protection In 2010, talking about issues like privacy and copyright, she complained about
Google's instinct for "pressing ahead" and its "megalomania". That same year, she asked
Apple Inc. to tell state data protection officials about the kind of data the company was gathering on individual
iPhone users in Germany. In a case Leutheusser herself brought to the
Federal Constitutional Court of Germany, the judges eventually rejected a core piece of security legislation that requires data on telephone calls and e-mail traffic to be stored for up to six months for possible use by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. As part of the draft of a law governing
workplace privacy, she proposed placing restrictions on employers who want to use
Facebook profiles when recruiting. She also expressed her support for legislation that would punish officials who purchase illegally obtained data of German tax evaders in Switzerland. In response to the
2013 mass surveillance scandal, Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, in a
guest editorial for the Web site
Spiegel Online, called the revelations about the U.S. surveillance "deeply disconcerting" and possibly "dangerous." A week before President
Barack Obama's visit to Berlin in June 2013, she rejected Obama's earlier statement that "you can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience." In her commentary she wrote: "I don’t share this assessment. A society is less free the more intensively its citizens are watched, controlled and observed. Security is not an end in itself in a democratic society, but rather serves the security of freedom." Shortly after, Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger sent two letters to the British justice secretary,
Chris Grayling, and the home secretary,
Theresa May, stressing the widespread concern the disclosures about the
GCHQ Tempora programme triggered in Germany and demanding to know the extent to which German citizens have been targeted. At the same time, Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger demanded that the German intelligence service
BND provide a full explanation after it admitted to passing on massive amounts of so-called "
metadata" to the
NSA. When the United States approached E.U. justice ministers in October 2013 about signing an agreement to extradite former NSA contractor
Edward Snowden to the U.S. should he set foot on their soil, Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger refused to sign because she was not certain that Snowden had broken any laws and because he might make a good witness in a German parliamentary inquiry.
On LGBT rights Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger long sought to make
LGBT rights in Germany a key plank in the Free Democrats' platform. In 2012, she had her office prepare a "draft of a law to revise the rights of domestic partners," which would have put gays and lesbians on equal footing with married couples in all conceivable spheres of life, including
adoption. When the
Federal Constitutional Court of Germany ruled in 2013 that excluding same-sex couples from a tax benefit available for married partners is unconstitutional and said the government must retroactively change the 12-year-old legislation, she pressed for legislative action. Again, after the court decided that gays and lesbians should be allowed to adopt children already adopted by their partners, the minister argued that "[t]he decision to put civil unions and marriage on level footing needs a big push"; however, her party's efforts failed due to opposing views of her conservative coalition partner.
On rule of law in Russia After a Russian court found deceased lawyer
Sergei Magnitsky guilty of tax evasion in 2013, Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger condemned the posthumous verdict, saying on
Twitter: "The conviction of the dead Magnitsky is further evidence of the
Sovietization of Russia." A presidential human rights commission headed by former Russian president
Dmitry Medvedev had found in 2011 that the charges against the lawyer had been fabricated. With regard to the
Russian LGBT propaganda law introduced in 2013, she commented in
Welt am Sonntag that "Russia is taking another big step towards becoming a flawless dictatorship in ostracizing homosexuals." Unlike German chancellor
Angela Merkel and foreign minister
Guido Westerwelle at the time, Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger later suggested that the newly enacted law, which discriminates against gays and lesbians, could be grounds for boycotting the
2014 Winter Olympics. On 3 March 2015, Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger attended the funeral of Russian politician
Boris Nemtsov, who had been
shot and killed on 27 February 2015. Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger called chancellor Angela Merkel to show commitment to convince Russian president
Vladimir Putin to release jailed Ukrainian filmmaker
Oleg Sentsov.
On the fight against terrorism After then-Interior Minister
Wolfgang Schäuble confirmed in late 2005 that, under the previous government led by
Gerhard Schröder, German agents had interviewed
Mohammed Haydar Zammar, Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger condemned these methods: "If you're not allowed to torture, then you're not allowed to profit from information that may have been obtained through kidnapping and torture." During a domestic debate on
anti-terrorism legislation, Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger in 2010 warned that passenger profiling in German airports where passengers are categorized as high or low risk based on, among other things, their ethnic background, might fall foul of German and European law.
On arms exports In the (
Bundessicherheitsrat), Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger was one of the most vocal critics of German arms exports to
Saudi Arabia. In 2011, she initially opposed Merkel when the Council discussed Saudi Arabia's request for up to 270
Leopard 2 tanks, but then she deferred to the cabinet's decision. Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger did not attend a Council meeting in December 2012 when the ministers voted on the purchase of a few hundred
"Boxer" armed transport vehicles.
On European integration During the
2012–13 Cypriot financial crisis, Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger broke new ground by calling directly on European Union leaders to do more to defend Germany's role in helping the weaker
Eurozone members. She noted that although all
Eurozone member countries were involved in deciding on aid packages when a country applied for help, Germany always ended up as the target of anger.
On Vergangenheitsbewältigung of German Nazi pastlko; During the period of Reunification in the 1990s', Leutheusser Schnarrenberger, as Minister of Justice, refused to return eight buildings in East Germany belonging to six Austrian Jewish citizens. Allgemeine Judische Wochenzeitung; 10 September 1992; "Expropriation through the back door; German Government adds to its coffers / Loopholes in German bureaucracy make Injustice permanent." ("Enteignung durch die Hintertur. Der Bund bereichert sich / winkelzuge deutscher burokratie schreiben unrecht fest"). In the
2012 Munich artworks discovery, Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger refused to retroactively extend the
statute of limitations in order to prosecute
Cornelius Gurlitt, the 80-year-old who hoarded artworks for half a century, urging him instead to acknowledge he has "moral as well as legal obligations." ==Other activities==