Court on high

Many of the rulings issued by Germany's Constitutional Court, the Bundesverfassungsgericht, have had a direct impact on people's personal lives. In the 1970s, for instance, the court decided that regulations permitting abortion were unconstitutional because they didn't allow for the protection of human life. The judgment sparked emotionally charged debate throughout German society.

The court's rulings on homosexual marriage also caused substantial social debate and played an important role in reducing discrimination against homosexual partnerships in Germany.

When it comes to religious freedom, too, the court has issued several notable rulings. In its headscarf ruling, the court provided a legal framework for prohibiting teachers from wearing headscarves in the classroom.

In its crucifix ruling, similarly, the court banned the Bavarian practice of hanging crucifixes and crosses in the classroom, concluding that the regulations allowing the practice went against Germany's constitution, the Basic Law.

A ruling on the census, issued in 1983, played a key role in forming Germany's basic right to informational self-determination. The court found that every person reserves the right to decide how his or her personal data is used and disseminated.

This judgment was followed by a number of further data protection rulings, including the well-known decision to ban eavesdropping on people's homes, known as the "great bugging attack" ("Großer Lauschangriff"), in 2004.

Life versus life

The fight against organized crime and international terrorism - especially in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on Washington and New York - led to the creation of new laws and to increased civilian surveillance.

The Constitutional Court forbade the so-called "air security" law in 2005, which called for hijacked airplanes to be shot down to prevent them from being turned into weapons like in the 9/11 attacks.

Lawmakers had argued that the shooting down of a hijacked aircraft - including the passengers onboard - was justified by the intention to prevent a crime that would claim even more victims.

The court found that this argumentation, because it weighed the value of one human life against another, to be unconstitutional.

The court's "online search" ruling, issued in 2008, laid out another basic right for German citizens that - like the ruling on controlling one's own information - had not previously been explicitly formulated in the constitution: the right to the private use of information technology.

Authorities were permitted to search the digital data of citizens only in the face of a concrete danger to the wellbeing of the state, and under strict prerequisites with a warrant from a judge.

Personal privacy versus press freedom

The court has issued several important rulings affecting press freedom and freedom of expression.

In the court's first broadcasting ruling, issued in 1961, then-Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's planned "Deutschland-Fernsehen" (Germany TV) as a state-controlled national broadcaster was found to be unconstitutional.

In the controversial Lebach ruling, issued in 1973, the court decided that the protection and re-socialization of a man convicted of playing a role in a multiple murder took precedent over freedom of the press.

In accordance with the ruling, a documentary film detailing the quadruple homicide of four Bundeswehr soldiers at the Lebach military base - including the names of the culprits and the man convicted of complicity to the crime - was prohibited from being broadcast.

Banning political parties

During the Cold War, the court made a mark with rulings that led to bans of the Socialist Reich Party (SRP), which saw itself in the tradition of the Nazi Party, in 1952 and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1956.

A case concerning the ban of the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) had to be dropped in 2003; authorities ran the risk of having to expose the informants who had infiltrated the NDP, if the case been pursued to its end.

Europe before Karlsruhe

Nowadays, the court is also tasked with assessing the compatibility of Germany's constitution with European law. In the "Solange-I-ruling" (solange means "as long as") issued in 1974, the court decided that it was responsible for ensuring the compatibility of European and German law, as long as the law in question didn't concern any basic rights covered by European Community.

With the "Solange-II-ruling" that followed in 1986, the court revised its first ruling regarding the compatibility of German and European law in that it found the European Court of Justice, Europe's final judiciary instance, to provide sufficient constitutional protection.

A few years later, in 1993, the Constitutional Court ruled that the European Union's founding legislation, the Maastricht Treaty, was fully compatible with Germany's Basic Law.

Finally, in its "Lisbon ruling" from 2009, the court demanded that Europe's reformed constitution, the Lisbon Treaty, provide German parliament with more rights in European affairs.

The court repeated this call in a recent ruling concerning the euro rescue fund, the European Financial Stability Facility. Though Karlsruhe agreed that the fund was in abidance with Basic Law, it called for more rights to be granted to the Bundestag in making such decisions.

Author: Daphne Grathwohl / glb
Editor: Nancy Isenson