Jan-Henrik Herchenröder: Die Selbsterfindung des Bundesverfassungsgerichts (1951-1958), Kartoniert / Broschiert

Klappentext

The book is devoted to the early years of the Federal Constitutional Court, founded in 1951, drawing on case files and working records that have only recently become accessible in the Federal Archives. It examines how the Court developed during its first seven years and the extent to which its members contributed to the significant increase in its importance over this short period. The starting point is the institution's difficult beginnings and the heterogeneous composition of its bench. On the basis of the personnel files of all the judges, including the sole female justice, Erna Scheffler, it becomes possible to describe their life paths and formative influences and to analyze how these shaped the Court's work. The study of the Court's files also makes it possible, for the first time, to describe its internal organizational and procedural structures and to assess the contribution of individual members to the growing importance of the institution. The central finding of the study is the thesis that the Federal Constitutional Court played a decisive role in its own development and, in this sense, effectively invented itself. It was the Court - or rather its members - who established their own procedural rules, specified their competences, asserted independence from political influence, fought for their status as a constitutional organ, prevented reforms to the detriment of the Court, and gradually established rigorous review of the ordinary courts and the legislature against the standard of the Basic Law.