Federal Constitutional Court of Germany - Scope

Scope

In Art. 20 s. 3 of the Basic Law, it is stipulated that all three branches of the state (the legislature, executive, and judiciary) are bound directly by the constitution. As a result, the court can rule acts of any branches unconstitutional, whether for formal violations (exceeding powers or violating procedures) or for material conflicts (when the civil rights prescribed in the Grundgesetz are not respected).

The powers of the Federal Constitutional Court are defined in article 93 of the Grundgesetz. This constitutional norm is concertized by a federal law, the Federal Constitutional Court Act (BVerfGG). This federal law also defines how decisions of the court on material conflicts are put into force. The Constitutional Court has therefore several strictly defined procedures in which cases may be brought before it:

• Constitutional complaint: By means of the Verfassungsbeschwerde ("constitutional complaint") any person may allege that his or her constitutional rights have been violated. Although only a small fraction of these are actually successful (ranging around 2.5% since 1951), several have resulted in major legislation being invalidated, especially in the field of taxation. The large majority of the court's procedures fall into this category; 135,968 such complaints were filed from 1957 to 2002.
• Abstract regulation control: Several political institutions, including the governments of the Bundesländer (states), may bring a federal law before the court if they consider it unconstitutional. A well known example of this procedure was the 1975 abortion decision, which invalidated legislation intended to decriminalise abortion.
• Specific regulation control: Any regular court which is convinced, that a law in question for a certain case is not in conformance with the constitution must suspend that case and bring this law before the Federal Constitutional Court.
• Federal dispute: Federal institutions, including members of the Bundestag, may bring internal disputes over competences and procedures before the court.
• State-federal dispute: The Länder may bring disputes over competences and procedures between the states and federal institutions before the court.
• Investigation committee control
• Federal election scrutiny: Violations of election laws may be brought before the court by political institution or any involved voter.
• Impeachment procedure: Impeachment proceedings may be brought against the Federal President, a judge, or a member of one of the Federal Supreme Courts, by the Bundestag, the Bundesrat or the federal government, based on violation of constitutional or federal law.
• Prohibition of a political party: Only the Constitutional Court has the power to ban a political party in Germany. This has happened just twice, both times in the 1950s: the Socialist Reich Party (SRP), a neo-Nazi group, was banned in 1952, and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) was banned in 1956. A third such procedure to prohibit the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) failed in 2003 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. This was a 4-4 decision, which according to the court's rules is considered a dismissal. The court did not decide on the ban itself.

Germany's Constitutional Court has been quite active, striking down more than 600 laws because they were found unconstitutional (as of 2009).