Theodor Ritterspach

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Theodor Ritterspach (born February 27, 1904 in Kirchheimbolanden ; † May 12, 1999 there ) was a judge at the Federal Constitutional Court from 1951 to 1975 .

Life

Ritterspach studied law and political science at the University of Munich and passed both state exams. During his studies he received a scholarship from the Maximilianeum Foundation . In 1930 he entered the Bavarian administrative service, worked briefly in the government of the Palatinate in Speyer , and in 1931 moved to the Bavarian Ministry of Education , where he was promoted to the government council . From 1936 he was employed in the Reich Ministry of Finance . In October 1946 Ritterspach returned to the Bavarian Ministry of Education, where he had been a ministerial advisor since 1948 . In 1950 he moved to the Federal Ministry of the Interior in Bonn , also with the rank of Ministerial Councilor.

Judge of the Federal Constitutional Court

On September 6, 1951, Ritterspach was elected by the Federal Council to the first Senate of the newly created Federal Constitutional Court. The election took place for eight years with possible re-election. Ritterspach was re-elected several times and did not retire until November 8, 1975. After Willi Geiger, he is the longest-serving federal constitutional judge in the history of the Federal Republic. He participated in many important decisions of his Senate, including the party bans by the SRP (1952) and KPD (1956). In accordance with the distribution of competences in the court, Ritterspach's effectiveness lay primarily in the area of ​​jurisprudence on fundamental rights . These include the pharmacy ruling (1958), the Soraya ruling (1973) and the first decision on abortion (1975). However, Ritterspach achieved outstanding legal historical importance as a reporter of the Lüth judgment in 1958, in which the fundamental rights were no longer interpreted as defensive rights against the state, but as an objective system of values. Many constitutional law teachers consider this judgment - positively or negatively - to be the most important judgment in the history of the Federal Constitutional Court.

Honors

When he was 68, he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit with a star and shoulder ribbon. In 1975 he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic for his services to the relationship between the constitutional courts of Germany and Italy. In 1986 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Mainz .

literature

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