The Politics of Constitutional Review in Germany

The Politics of Constitutional Review in Germany. By Georg Vanberg. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 208p. 70. 00. The judicial power to review the constitutionality of laws was a unique feature of American constitutionalism well into the twentieth century. The perceived success of this experiment in limited democracy prompted several nations, among them West Germany, to create courts of constitutional review in the aftermath of World War II. Now several decades later, as the author of this book writes, constitutional review “has emerged as an almost universal feature of western-style democracy” (p. 1). In most of the world's advanced liberal democracies, the power to review the constitutionality of laws has been lodged in specialized courts of constitutional review, meaning that only these courts are empowered to nullify laws on constitutional grounds. Germany's Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) is one of the most notable and powerful of these specialized tribunals. It is notable for the frequency with which it has invalidated national and local laws and also for the extensive reach of its jurisdiction. Owing to the German court's rejection of any political question doctrine, together with its authority to decide with finality abstract questions of constitutional law—that is, questions raised by legislators outside the normal framework of an actual law suit—its powers of review actually exceed those of the Supreme Court. Indeed, the FCC has begun to challenge the Supreme Court as the leading model of constitutional review around the world.