A Chamber of the Federal Constitutional Court Endorses Private Dentists' Information Service and Directory Within the Framework of the Right to Occupational Freedom

2001 ◽  
Vol 2 (18) ◽  
Author(s):  
Holger Hestermeyer

The Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court) has repeatedly had to deal with regulation of the medical professions. (1) The frequency of decisions in this area result from the clash between two fundamental values: One is the constitutionally recognized “occupational freedom” (Art. 12 I GG), the other is the health of the population, which justifies the numerous regulations for the medical professions. (2) A recent decision of the Second (Three-Judge) Chamber of the First Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court (BVerfG 1 BvR 881/00 — decided on October 18, 2001) is a further instance of this conflict.

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 449-468
Author(s):  
David Kuhn

Although the right to form and exercise parliamentary opposition has always been recognized as an essential part of the free democratic basic order, there is widespread disagreement within jurisprudence about the specific status of oppositional actors in the German Bundestag . The ruling of the Federal Constitutional Court of May 3, 2016 has provided little clarity in this respect . While the court rightly recognizes the principle of effective opposition, many issues remain unclear, particularly with regard to the constitutional derivation on the one hand and the practical consequences of the principle on the other . This contribution attempts to answer these questions and finally pleads for an opposition-sensitive design of the instruments of parliamentary committees of inquiry and abstract norm control in order to ensure the effectiveness of parliamentary opposition also by formal law .


2001 ◽  
Vol 2 (9) ◽  
Author(s):  
Viktor Winkler

It's a small book. Actually, it is a very small book. Only one hundred and twenty-eight pages, it's a format so thin it could fit into a pocket. As a matter of fact, it is smaller than a copy of the Grundgesetz (German Basic Law) that a German law student would carry along to class. The book's title, however, is considerably more intrepid than the book's small stature. At the same time breathtakingly pithy and slightly immodest, the book is simply called Das Bundesverfassungsgericht (The Federal Constitutional Court). And at the top of the cover, just to make sure, the word “WISSEN” (KNOWLEDGE) appears in big letters. While one wonders how a publication of such limited size could deign to comprehensively present the important “knowledge” of the Federal Constitutional Court, the other words on the cover provide some assurance. Those words are the name of the book's author who obviously could not be more adequate for the task. The author, Jutta Limbach, is the current President of the Federal Constitutional Court presiding in her seventh year.


ICL Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerstin Braun

Abstract Many states are grappling with the regulation of assistance in suicide and ending the life of another upon their request. Initially punishable in most countries, a growing number of jurisdictions have now introduced permissive frameworks decriminalising, to varying degrees, rendering assistance in dying. Other countries, however, have proceeded with the criminal prohibition and several courts have upheld the lawfulness of the respective criminal laws during human rights and constitutional challenges. Yet, the Supreme Court of Canada in 2015, the German Federal Constitutional Court in February 2020 and the Austrian Constitutional Court in December 2020 have respectively declared unconstitutional and void national criminal laws prohibiting rendering assistance in dying. This article first outlines the criminal law framework relating to assisted dying in Canada, Germany and Austria. It subsequently analyses the judgments before pondering their impact on the legal landscape in the three countries. The article concludes that while the Canadian Supreme Court decision appears to have had a significant impact on the introduction of subsequent legislation in Canada, the effects of the Constitutional Courts’ judgments seem much more subdued in Germany and are yet to unfold in Austria.


Author(s):  
Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde ◽  
Mirjam Künkler ◽  
Tine Stein

In this article Böckenförde contrasts his concept of open encompassing neutrality (found in most Scandinavian countries and in Germany) with that of distancing neutrality, as practised in France. While the latter champions negative religious freedom, open encompassing neutrality aims for a balancing of negative and positive religious freedom. Religious freedom for Böckenförde is multidimensional and includes the right to have (or not) a religious faith (freedom of belief), to affirm (or not) this faith privately and openly (freedom to profess), to exercise (or not) one’s religion publicly (freedom of worship), and to join together (or not) in religious communities (religious freedom of association). The correlate to these individual and group rights is the open and overarching principle of the state’s neutrality towards religion and other worldviews, entailing a prohibition on the state justifying law on religious grounds. Furthermore, it requires the state not to privilege religion over non-religion and one religious faith over another. Siding with the ruling of the Federal Constitutional Court (at a time when he was not a sitting judge), Böckenförde underlines that even religious communities who reject the democratic state have the right to be recognized and legally protected. What matters is not whether communities accept or reject the state, but whether they obey or violate its laws. This was the court’s view on the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and it must also be applied, Böckenförde writes, to religious fundamentalists who do not accept the secular order, as long as they do not violate any laws.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (102) ◽  
pp. 235
Author(s):  
Pablo Fernández de Casadevante Mayordomo

Resumen:El año 2017 fue testigo de importantes acontecimientos en relación con el fenómeno de la ideología de ultra derecha en Alemania. Si en enero, el Tribunal Constitucional Federal fallaba en contra de la prohibición del  NPD pese a reconocer el carácter antidemocrático de sus objetivos, en julio entraba en vigor una reforma constitucional para excluir de la financiación estatal a formaciones políticas que, siendo contrarias al orden democrático, no sean objeto de prohibición al carecer del potencial necesario para alcanzar sus objetivos. A modo de colofón, septiembre finalizaba con la celebración de elecciones federales y la entrada de la AfD en el Bundestag como tercera fuerza política. A la luz de todo ello, en el presente trabajo se apuesta por el análisis de las principales implicaciones jurídicas derivadas de dichos hechos, ello con el ánimo de ofrecer al lector una visión actualizada sobre el control jurídico aplicable a la ideología de los partidos políticos en Alemania.Summary1. Introduction. 2. The right of every democratic system to its self-defence. 2.1. Theoretical approach. 2.2. Express intangibility clauses and ideological control. 3. The defense of democracy and political parties in the German legal system. 3.1. The German concept of militant democracy. 3.2. Legal regime applicable to anti-democratic political parties. 3.2.1. Constitutional framework. 3.2.2. Basic legislative framework. 4. The German jurisprudential adaptation to the ECHR conventionality control: the NPD case. 4.1. The necessity test according to the ECHR jurisprudence. 4.2. Potentiality as a substitute for the principle of proportionality. 4.3. Anti-democratic but constitutional. 5. Main observations after the recent constitutional reform. 6. Conclusions. Bibliography.Abstract:2017 witnessed important events in relation to the phenomenon of the right-wing ideology in Germany. First, in January, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled against the prohibition of the NPD, despite recognizing the anti-democratic nature of its objectives; then, in July, a constitutional reform came into effect to exclude from the state funding those political formations that, contravening the democratic order, are not prohibited as they lack the necessary potential to achieve their objectives. To conclude, September ended with the holding of federal elections and the entry of the AfD into the Bundestag, as the country’s third largest force. In light of all this, the present work is committed to the analysis of the main legal implications derived from these events, this with the aim to offer the reader an updated view on the legal control applicable to theideology of political parties in Germany.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (S1) ◽  
pp. 40-44
Author(s):  
Jud Mathews

AbstractThe Right to Be Forgotten II crystallizes one lesson from Europe’s rights revolution: persons should be able to call on some kind of right to protect their important interests whenever those interests are threatened under the law. Which rights instrument should be deployed, and by what court, become secondary concerns. The decision doubtless involves some self-aggrandizement by the German Federal Constitutional Court (GFCC), which asserts for itself a new role in protecting European fundamental rights, but it is no criticism of the Right to Be Forgotten II to say that it advances the GFCC’s role in European governance, so long as the decision also makes sense in the context of the European and German law. I argue that it does, for a specific reason. The Right to Be Forgotten II represents a sensible approach to managing the complex pluralism of the legal environment in which Germany and other EU member states find themselves.


2002 ◽  
Vol 3 (10) ◽  
Author(s):  
Volker Röben

The Untersuchungsausschuss-Fall (Parliamentary Committee Case) 2 BvE 2/01, decided by the Bundesverfassungsgericht (BVerfG – Federal Constitutional Court) on 8 April 2002, concerns the so-called right of enquête, a central function of Parliament under the parliamentary system designed by the German Basic Law. The right of enquête, the investigation by Parliament by taking evidence complete with the subpoena powers normally reserved to criminal investigations, has been an integral part of both the Weimar and the Bonn Constitutions. Max Weber, in the era of the Bismarck-Constitution for the German state founded in 1871, made a forceful pitch for the equality of the Parliament and Executive. He argued that members of Parliament needed to be professionals and to have full access to the information that, traditionally, was the source of power of the executive. Instituting committees of investigation with the power to take evidence was the means to do so. In fact, Weber went further, arguing that the right to call for an investigative parliamentary committee needed to be vested in a (qualified) minority of the members of Parliament. There is no equivalent of this specific aspect in the other European parliamentary systems. Article 34 of the Weimar Constitution provided that one fifth of the members of Parliament could ask for the institution of a committee of investigation. The same quorum had the right to move for the hearing of specific evidence by the committee.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (8) ◽  
pp. 0-0
Author(s):  
Михаил Пресняков ◽  
Mikhail Pryesnyakov

In article the question of validity of the Constitution of the Russian Federation and some other sources of the right which can also possess the highest validity is considered. In particular the author comes to a conclusion that legal positions of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation possess the highest validity and in total with the constitutional provisions represent the actual Constitution. On the other hand, both laws on amendments to the Constitution, and the universally recognized norms of international law on the validity stand below constitutional precepts of law. Acts of the Constitutional Assembly of the Russian Federation may in future be qualified as having the highest judicial effect. Such acts may abolish or change any provision of the present Constitution. At the same time the universally recognized norms of international law and the laws of the Russian Federation regulating amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation as independent juridical acts and sources of constitutional law are inferior as compared with the constitutional legal norms.


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 799
Author(s):  
Damian Agata Yuvens

Pengujian terhadap beberapa ketentuan dalam Undang-Undang Republik Indonesia Nomor 5 Tahun 1960 tentang Peraturan Dasar Pokok-Pokok Agraria dan Undang-Undang Republik Indonesia Nomor 1 Tahun 1974 tentang Perkawinan ditujukan untuk memastikan agar warga negara Indonesia yang menikah dengan warga negara asing bisa tetap memiliki hak atas tanah dengan titel Hak Milik maupun Hak Guna Bangunan. Hasil akhirnya, Mahkamah Konstitusi Republik Indonesia, melalui Putusan No. 69/PUU-XIII/2015, menolak sebagian permohonan yang diajukan dan memberikan tafsir sehubungan dengan perjanjian perkawinan, sehingga perjanjian perkawinan juga bisa dibuat selama dalam ikatan perkawinan. Namun demikian, terdapat masalah nyata dalam Pertimbangan Hukum yang disusun, yaitu falasi, kurangnya pertimbangan dan tidak adanya analisis dampak. Di sisi lain, penilaian yang dilakukan secara terpisah oleh Mahkamah Konstitusi terhadap objek yang diujikan menyebabkan tidak tampaknya perdebatan komprehensif mengenai isu pokok yang diujikan. Terlepas dari kekurangan tersebut, tak dapat pula disangkal bahwa Putusan No. 69/PUU-XIII/2015 memberikan alternatif jalan keluar.Review on some provisions in Law of the Republic of Indonesia Number 5 of 1960 concerning Basic Regulations on Agrarian Principles as well as Law of the Republic of Indonesia Number 1 of 1974 concerning Marriage were submitted in order to ensure that Indonesian citizen who marries foreign citizen could still hold land right with title of the Right of Ownership and the Right of Building. As a result, Constitutional Court of the Republic of Indonesia, through Decision No. 69/PUUXIII/2015, rejected part of the petition and provided interpretation in relation to marital agreement, so that marital agreement could be drafted during the marriage relation. Nevertheless, there are visible problems in the Legal Consideration, namely fallacy, lack of consideration and no impact analysis. On the other hand, assessment conducted separately by Constitutional Court of the Republic of Indonesia caused the invisibility of comprehensive debate on the main issue that is contested. Apart from the said shortcomings, it is undeniable that Decision No. 69/PUU-XIII/2015 provided alternative way out.


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