The Constitutional Court – Applying the Proportionality Principle – as a 
Subsidiary Authority for the Assessment of Political Outcomes

Engel, Christoph

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Add to Basket

Local TagsRelease HistoryDetailsSummary

Released

Paper

The Constitutional Court – Applying the Proportionality Principle – as a Subsidiary Authority for the Assessment of Political Outcomes

MPS-Authors

/persons/resource/persons183106

Engel, Christoph
Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Max Planck Society;

External Resource

http://www.coll.mpg.de/pdf_dat/2001_10online.pdf
(Preprint)

Fulltext (restricted access)

There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.

Fulltext (public)

There are no public fulltexts stored in PuRe

Supplementary Material (public)

There is no public supplementary material available

Citation

Engel, C. (2001). The Constitutional Court – Applying the Proportionality Principle – as a Subsidiary Authority for the Assessment of Political Outcomes.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0028-6D3D-B

Abstract

The Constitutional Court is one of the most characteristic features of the German constitution. The most important power of the Court rests in litigable fundamental rights. According to established jurisprudence, any governmental interference with freedom or property needs justification. It must pursue a legitimate aim, and the interference must be conducive to this end, it must be the least intrusive measure, and it may not be out of proportion. Conceptually, this dogmatic tool could become the vessel for a long-standing dream of (some) political scientists. It could turn the Constitutional Court into an authority for assessing political outcomes. The paper demonstrates the many obstacles, originating both from political sciences and from law. They call for high modesty and prudence. But they do not turn the dream into outright utopia. Systems theory, very liberally employed, allows us to define a subsidiary role for the Constitutional Court in assessing political outcomes. The paper concludes by analysing the dogmatic consequences for the interpretation of fundamental rights.