Home > Federal Constitutional Court of Germany
The Federal Constitutional Court (in German: Bundesverfassungsgericht) is a special court established by the German constitution, the Grundgesetz (Basic Law). From its inception, the Court has been located in the city of Karlsruhe, intentionally dislocated from the other federal institutions (earlier in Bonn, now in Berlin).
The sole task of the court is judicial review. It may therefore declare public acts unconstitutional and thus render them ineffective. As such, it is somewhat similar to the Supreme Court of the United States. However, it differs from it and other supreme courts in that it is not part of the regular judicial system. Most importantly, it does not serve as a regular court of appeals from lower courts.
Article 1 subsection 3 of the Grundgesetz stipulates that all the three branches of the state, that is, the legislative, executive, and judicial branches, are bound directly by the constitution. As a result, the court can abolish acts of all three branches as unconstitutional — either for formal violations, e.g. exceedance of competences or violation of procedures, or for material conflicts, e.g. because the human rights prescribed in the Grundgesetz were not respected. Although such acts may include court decisions, this is just a special case of judicial review and not part of the regular German appeals system.
The Constitutional Court has several procedures in which cases may be brought before it.
- With a Constitutional Complaint (Verfassungsbeschwerde), any person may file a complaint alleging that his or her constitutional rights were violated. Although only a slim majority of these are actually successful (ranging around 2.5 % since 1951), several of these resulted in major legislation overturns, especially in the field of taxing. The large majority of the court's procedures fall in this category, with 135,968 such Complaints filed from 1957 to 2002.
- In addition, any regular court which has doubts about whether a law in question for a certain case is in conformance with the constitution may suspend that case and bring this law before the Constitutional Court.
- Several political institutions, including the governments of the Bundesländer, may bring a law passed by the federal legislation before the court if they consider it unconstitutional. The most well-known examples of these procedures included legislation legalizing abortion, which -- in highly debated rulings -- were declared unconstitutional twice by the Constitutional Court.
- Federal institutions, including members of the Bundestag, may bring internal disputes over competences and procedures before the Court.
- Finally, only the Constitutional Court has the power to prohibit a political party in Germany. This has only happened twice in the 1950sCenturies: 19th century 20th century 21st century Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s Years: 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 Events and trends Technology United States tests the first fusion bomb.: the Sozialistische Reichspartei (SRP), an outright neo-naziThe terms Neo-Nazism and Neo-Fascism refer to any social or political movement to revive Nazism or Fascism, respectively, and postdates the Second World War. The Neo-Nazi movement is identified by devotion to Adolf Hitler, the national insignia of Nazi Ge party, was banned in 1952Summary of notable events in 1952 . Events January events January 8 West Germany has 8 million refugees inside its borders. January 24 Sudden heavy snowfall in Algeria. January 24 Vincent Massey sworn in as first Canada-born Governor-General of Canada., the Communist Party of GermanyThe Communist Party of Germany (in German, Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands KPD was formed in December of 1918 from the Spartacist League, which originated as a small factional grouping within the Social Democratic Party (SPD) opposed to the First World (KPD) was banned in 19561956 is a leap year starting on Sunday. see link for calendar) Events January January 1 End of Anglo- Egyptian Condominium in Sudan. January 16 President Gamal Abdal Nasser of Egypt vows to reconquer Palestine January 26 1956 Winter Olympic Games open in. A third such procedure to prohibit the extremist right-wing National Democratic PartyThe National Democratic Party ( German: Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands NPD) is a far-right political party in Germany that was founded in the early 1960s. In 2003, the federal government, the Bundestag and the Bundesrat jointly attempted to ban (NPD) spectacularly failed in 20032003 is a common year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar), and also: The International Year of Freshwater The European Disability Year Summary Perhaps the defining global event of the year 2003 was the Invasion of Iraq launched by the U after the court discovered that many of the party officials were in fact controlled by the German secret services that had injected its agents for the sake of surveillance.
