scholarly journals The Constitutional Court of the Federal Republic of Germany

SEEU Review ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-155
Author(s):  
Emir Kurtishi

Abstract Decisions made so far by the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany have always been characterized by their writing and content, even down to details, precision, accuracy, professional legal style of writing, always clear in the elaboration and adjudication of cases from its competence, but surprisingly, in our country, only a few have paid attention to the German Court in a scientific context, which can be seen from the only few materials we possess in the Albanian language. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of this Court, so that the comparative aspects can be made, highlighting its advantages and disadvantages, in case of dictating the state need for reform of the Constitutional Courts. Those who have institutionalized this constitutional institution know its value in the system of constitutional justice, which performs it in terms of protection of constitutions, its principles and value, and most importantly in the protection of freedoms and rights of human beings and citizens. The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany, to this date, has conveyed the efficiency of the protection of the German legal order, the serious approach and law interpretation, for the protection of freedoms and human rights, which ranks this court into a high level among all other powers in the German law system. The author, in the following paper, gives an overview of this Court starting with its history, organization and functioning, which today undoubtedly constitutes one of the most important constitutional courts in the world.

Author(s):  
S. G. Trifonov

The article examines and analyzes the legal status of the constitutional Court of the Federal Republic of Germany, examines the functions inherent in this body of constitutional jurisdiction of Germany, the features of its place in the system of bodies of the Federal German state, also pays attention to the land constitutional courts and the features of their status and functioning.


Author(s):  
Stefan Kadelbach

This chapter deals with the making, status, and interpretation of international treaties under the German Constitution. It describes the interrelationship of the different institutions in treaty-making and shows how a comparatively old provision of the German Basic Law has been adapted slowly to new circumstances over the past decades. Thus, even though foreign affairs has remained a domain of the executive, several developments have contributed to an enhanced role of Parliament over time. These developments are partly due to the role of special sectors of law such as EU law and the law governing the use of force and partly due to changes in constitutional practice. As for the status of treaties in German law, the Federal Constitutional Court has developed a stance according to which treaties generally share the rank of the legal act that implements them into domestic law. A notable exception is the European Convention of Human Rights, which has assumed a quasi-constitutional rank by means of consistent interpretation. Some reference is made to other continental systems to assess how far different constitutions bring about certain features; various systems appear similar in many respects at first sight, whereas features in which they differ may be a source of inspiration for future constitutional practice.


1977 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernst Livneh

It is difficult to see the connection between these two topics, but on 25 February 1975 the Constitutional Court of the Federal Republic of Germany gave a decision of great importance in both fields, and although Israel adheres to another system of law, in the opinion of the writer, this decision is of great interest here too.The amendment of the German law relating to abortions, whose constitutionality was examined in the judgment mentioned, is part of a reform movement spreading from Europe to the Americas in the West and to Russia, India and Singapore in the East. It began to have influence upon legislation between the two wars (Russia 1920, Scandinavia and Switzerland in the 1930's), but gathered momentum particularly during the last decade (one of the earlier laws in this series is the English Abortion Act, 1967; one of the latest, the French Law of 17 January 1975).


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.


2001 ◽  
Vol 2 (17) ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Hanschmann

As already reported by German Law Journal, the German Government, the Bundestag (Federal Parliament) as well as the Bundesrat (Federal Legislative Chamber of the Länder) filed motions with the Bundesverfassungsgericht (FCC; Federal Constitutional Court) seeking a constitutional ban of the extreme right-wing National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD). Now, some eight, respectively six months, after filing the motions for a constitutional order of the NPD's dissolution, the banning of all of party activities and the confiscation of the party's property, the FCC decided on October 1st, 2001, that the motions were admissible. The following annotation discusses the meaning of the Court's decision to admit the motions, provoding a brief account of what the decision says and what — just as interesting — it does not say. It will also report on the course of events and developments that have taken place during the stretch of time between the filing of the applications and the Court's ruling of October 1. Finally this report will provide, leaving aside speculations as to possible results of the process, a short survey of the legal possibilities that are open to the NPD, once the FCC in Karlsruhe grants the motions and declares the party unconstitutional.


2005 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 869-894 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Hartwig

On October 14, 2004 the Bundesverfassungsgericht (BVerfG – German Federal Constitutional Court) delivered a judgment which gave rise to vivid reactions in the mass media and to a dispute between the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the German Federal Constitutional Court. In interviews, members of the Strasbourg court spoke about their disappointment in the German Court's unwillingness to implement decisions of the ECtHR while members of the German court referred to the necessity to respect national particularities. Whereas, normally, the ECtHR and the constitutional courts of the Member States of the Council of Europe are fighting side by side for human rights and, therefore, consider themselves as natural allies, this time their decisions, which seem to be incompatible, led to a dispute which attracted as much public interest as a film or theatre premiere.


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.


2008 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 2081-2094
Author(s):  
Peter E. Quint

Without much doubt, the two great pillars of American scholarship on the German Basic Law and the jurisprudence of the Federal Constitutional Court are (in the order of first appearance) Donald Kommers's monumental casebook, The Constitutional Jurisprudence of the Federal Republic of Germany and David Currie's magisterial treatise, The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany. Professor Kommers's comprehensive work was a milestone in a long career that has been very substantially devoted to the study of German constitutional law. In the late 1960s, Kommers spent a research year at the German Constitutional Court and, drawing in part on personal interviews with the justices, he published the first major work in English on that court. Since then, Kommers has produced a steady stream of significant works on German constitutional law.


Author(s):  
Shu-Perng Hwang

This article critically approaches the recent decision of the German Federal Constitutional Court regarding the ban on strikes for civil servants. It shows that the judgment cannot be seen as a decision committed to international public law, as some scholars suggest. By once more adopting a material understanding of Art. 33 para. 5 Basic Law and thereby not only confirming the constitutionality, but in particular the constitutional status of the ban on strikes for civil servants, the court holds on to the absolute primacy of the Basic Law that is not to be undermined by the ECHR or the jurisprudence of the ECtHR as a means of interpretation. The reference to the need to contextualize the jurisprudence of the ECtHR as well as the emphasis on the national particularity of the Federal Republic of Germany clearly indicate that, by developing a state-centred principle of commitment to public international law, the court does not seek to align and harmonize the requirements of the ECHR and the Basic Law by developing a state-centred principle of commitment to public international law but rather to achieve a delimitation of competences between the spheres of the ECtHR and the Federal Constitutional Court.


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