Constitutional Reasoning in the German Federal Constitutional Court

Abstract

This article examines the method of constitutional reasoning of the German Federal Constitutional Court. Situating German constitutional jurisprudence in its historical background, it analyses the characteristic types of arguments used in 40 ‘leading cases’ of the German Constitutional Court, including the use of precedents, foreign law and key concepts. The article is part of the CONREASON project, hosted by the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg (Germany) and by the Institute for Legal Studies of the Centre for Social Sciences at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest (Hungary), coordinated by András Jakab, Arthur Dyevre and Giulio Itzcovich.