Suchergebnisse

Constitutional litigation in the United States / Robert A. Kagan and Gregory Elinson -- Access to the German Federal Constitutional Court / Werner Heun -- Mobilization of the German Federal Constitutional Court / Erhard Blankenburg -- The U.S. Supreme Court's strategic decision making process / Timothy Johnson and Maron Sorenson -- Decision making at the German Federal Constitutional Court / Uwe Kranenpohl -- Junior varsity judges? : law clerks in the decisional process of the U.S. Supreme Court / Artemus Ward -- The legal assistants at the German Federal Constitutional Court : a "black box" of research? / Otwin Massing -- The implementation of U.S. Supreme Court decisions / Lawrence Baum -- Implementation of German Federal Constitutional Court decisions : judicial orders and the federal legislature / Thomas Gawron and Ralf Rogowski -- The U.S. Supreme Court and the German Federal Constitutional Court : selection, nomination and election of justices / Klaus Stewe -- The impact of the German Federal Constitutional Court on consolidation and quality of democracy / Sascha Kneip -- Constitutional courts in changing political systems / Hans J. Lietzmann

The outgoing tide of EU law will be Britain's most significant constitutional change in recent times. In an era of uncertainties, the UK Supreme Court proved to be a guardian of the constitutional role of Parliament. The case of Miller, decided in the UK Supreme Court in 2017, proved that point. The highest court in the UK has therefore gained an important place in the global community of Constitutional Courts. This global community finds its legitimacy in the recognition of common values as well as the recognition of national variations. This article analyses to which extent common values, and in particular those found in German law, have influenced decisions in the House of Lords and UK Supreme Court. To do so, the author analyses decisions by the House of Lords and the Supreme Court and extrajudicial speeches by the Justices of the Supreme Court for references to German constitutional law. It identifies and maps the themes that have attracted the attention of the justices of the Supreme Court. More recently, the UK Supreme Court has referred to judgments and extrajudicial writing by German Constitutional Court judges. This was in the context of constitutional questions relating to the tension between membership within the EU and national identity, a theme which has occupied German judges for some time. As well as that, the interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights has sparked an interest in German jurisprudence, in particular in the principle of proportionality.

A comprehensive and up-to-date survey of the history and functioning of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Political institutions are always works in progress. Their practical duties and aims as instruments of governance may not always match their constitutional blueprints or historical roles. Political offices might not always have the power to do what their constituent officers either need or want to do. A polity's assessment of whether the desired power is a need or a want may indeed mark a boundary between law and politics in the domain of institutional structure. The law gives, or is interpreted to give, political organs the tools they need to function effectively. They must fight for the rest.

The central purpose of this paper is to show that there are no major differences in the methods of constitutional interpretation in countries with varying degree of judicial review. Despite the fact that legal culture and traditions, underlying political theories, and values all affect methods of interpretation, there is no big gap in constitutional interpretation in practice in view of wide interpretive discretion. Obviously all legal systems require compliance with some fundamental interpretive standards irrespective of the legal system, and in a democratic society judicial decisions should be justified at least to avoid arbitrariness. The question is what are the limits beyond which judges cannot go in constitutional democracies? Can the foreign law be a parameter for judicial review of legislation? Hence, the style and method of legal argumentation that are used to justify the decision may differ in the countries belonging to different legal systems. Whether there are significant differences between the common law and civil law constitutional interpretation will be assessed through the comparative analysis of the United States Supreme Court and the German Federal Constitutional Court.

The highest judicial authority in the United States, the Supreme Court, plays a crucial role in interpreting the Constitution and in constitutional lawmaking. A primary reason for this is the extremely succinct formulation of most of the U.S. Constitution's text. Its instrumental nature provides the Supreme Court with ample opportunities to interpret its provisions before applying them to specific legal and factual circumstances. Additionally, the Constitution's text did not address many fundamental issues of constitutional law, which its drafters and the ratifying bodies at the end of the 18th century could not have foreseen.