The Federal Constitutional Court in Germany and the “Southwest Case”

The new German Constitution, the Basic Law for the German Federal Republic of May 23, 1949, provides in Article 92 that the highest judicial power shall be vested in a Federal Constitutional Court. Although the Bonn Basic Law thus created a new institution, it is an institution with a precedent in the former Weımar Constitution of 1919. In accordance with the latter, the Constitutional Tribunal (Staatsgerichtshof) had jurisdiction over constitutional controversies within any Land which had no tribunal of its own for the adjustment of such controversies, as well as over controversies, other than civil law matters, among the various Laender or between the Reich and one of the Laender. And the Supreme Court (Reichsgericht), as the highest authority, could establish finally whether disputed Land statutes were compatible with the federal Constitution.The Basic Law, however, grants the new Federal Constitutional Court considerably wider jurisdiction than that accorded either to the Constitutional Tribunal or to the Supreme Court under the Weimar Constitution. The Federal Constitutional Court must, above all, arbitrate both disputes which may arise among the constitutional organs of the Republic, the so-called “federal constitutional” cases, and the so-called “conflicting rules” (Normenkollisionen) cases—the latter designating disputes involving the compatibility of the written federal law or Land law with the Basic Law, as well as the compatibility of the Land law with the federal law.