Overview

In its six-decade history, the German Federal Constitutional Court has become one of the most powerful and influential constitutional tribunals in the world. It has played a central role in the establishment of liberalism, democracy, and the rule of law in post-war West Germany, and it has been a model for constitutional tribunals in many other nations. The Court stands virtually unchallenged as the most trusted institution of the German state. Written as a complete history of the German Federal Constitutional Court from its founding in 1951 up into the twenty-first century, this book explores how the court became so powerful, and why so few can resist its strength. Founded in 1951, the Court took root in a pre-democratic political culture. The Court's earliest contributions were to help establish liberal values and fundamental rights protection in the young Federal Republic. The early Court also helped democratize West German politics by reinforcing rights of speech and information, affirming the legitimacy of parliamentary opposition, and checking executive power. In time, as democratic values took hold in the country at large, the Court's early role in nurturing liberalism and democracy led many West Germans to view the Court not as a constraint on democracy, but as a bulwark of democracy's preconditions. In later decades, the Court played a stabilizing role - mediating political conflicts and integrating societal forces. Citizens disenchanted with partisan politics looked to the Court as a guardian of enduring values and a source of moral legitimacy. Through a comprehensive narrative of the Court's remarkable rise and careful analysis of its periodic crises, the work carefully dissects the success of the Court, presenting not only a traditional work of legal history, but a public history - both political and societal - as well as a doctrinal and jurisprudential account. Structured around the Court's major decisions from 1951 to 2001, the book examines popular and political reactions to those decisions, drawing heavily on newspaper accounts of major judgments and material from the archives of individual politicians and judges. The result is an impressive case study of the global phenomenon of constitutional justice.

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9780198753377

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This volume constitutes a fundamental work in the constitutional history of modern Germany and is of obvious interest, not only to legal historians but to all who are interested in the political and social history of postwar GermanyThere thus emerges from the pages of the book the portrait of an entire epoch of German history, the principal lines of which have been drawn from the decisions of the Court, which from its inception has guided and defined the democratic growth of the country. Antonella Bettoni, Giornale di Storia Costituzionale

Author Information

Justin Collings is Associate Professor of Law at the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University, where he teaches comparative constitutional law, legal history, and torts. He is a graduate of Yale Law School and holds a Ph.D. in modern European history from Yale University. In 2012-2013 he was law clerk to the Honourable Guido Calabresi of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

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