A method is disclosed for selectively triggering circuit breakers in the event of a short circuit, wherein an upstream circuit breaker and at least one downstream circuit breaker on the output side are provided. In at least one embodiment, the upstream circuit breaker monitors as to whether the or one of the downstream circuit breakers is already in the process of opening the switch contacts thereof to interrupt the circuit on the output side, while forming a switch arc. In order to reliably determine whether a downstream circuit breaker is already in the process of opening, according to at least one embodiment of the invention the upstream circuit breaker, so as to detect a switch arc on the output side, checks whether the ohmic resistance of the short circuit loop produced by a short circuit has an exponential curve over time in that an exponent is continually computed and based on the computer exponent the switch arc is determined if the computed exponent exceeds a threshold.