Who will vote for the Federal Constitutional Court?

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According to the Basic Law, jurisdiction has a central task. In particular, based on past experience, the Federal Constitutional Court has a great deal of responsibility. In order to meet this responsibility, the Basic Law regulates who elects the judges.

Constitutional judges uphold the constitution.
Constitutional judges uphold the constitution.

Political arbitrariness has so far ruined every form of government. The Basic Law therefore binds the entire state authority to the constitution and gives the Federal Constitutional Court the task of ensuring that this binding is observed. Therefore the court can annul decisions of all other state organs.

The opposition also votes

  • In view of the power of the Federal Constitutional Court, the Basic Law tries to influence the politics to curb the choice of judges. Art. 94 GG regulates who elects the judges of the Federal Constitutional Court and how they are elected. Details are regulated in ยงยง 5 ff BVerfGG.
  • In style of. 94 GG, the Bundestag and Bundesrat each elect half of the judges of the Federal Constitutional Court. According to the principles of proportional representation, the Bundestag first elects 12 electors. The electors come from the ruling party and the other parties represented in the Bundestag.
  • These electors then elect the individual judges with at least 8 votes. In particular, the opposition parties have a role to play. This regulation is intended to prevent the governing parties from filling the Federal Constitutional Court exclusively with their own supporters. The extent to which this is linked to political agreements is difficult to understand from the outside.
  • The Federal Council, as the state representative, elects the judges to be appointed by it in direct elections with a two-thirds majority.
    • Federal Constitutional Court - the tasks clearly explained

    The Federal Constitutional Court is the highest German court. His tasks are ...

  • This is to ensure the neutrality of the judges both on the part of the federal government and the states as well as in the relationship between the government and the opposition.

The Federal Constitutional Court must be independent

  • The judges are personally independent and their decision is subject only to their personal conscience.
  • The extent to which this requirement is actually implemented in practice is at least worthy of criticism when one considers that a long-standing Prime Minister of a federal state after the resignation of was elected to his office as judge at the Federal Constitutional Court and there may decide, directly or indirectly, on issues in which he was previously significantly involved as a politician was.
  • Ultimately, however, there are also concerns about the free one businesswhen the board of directors of a large corporation leaves office, it changes to the supervisory board and monitors measures that it previously decided on as board of directors.

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