Thuringian Constitutional Court

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Building with the meeting room of the Constitutional Court in Weimar
Judges bench

The Thuringian Constitutional Court (in short: ThürVerfGH ) is the state constitutional court of the Free State of Thuringia . The seat of the court is Weimar with the location Jenaer Straße 2a ( location ), the oral hearings take place at Gutenbergstraße 29a ( location ).

history

The constitution of the Free State of Thuringia of October 25, 1993 provided for a constitutional court. The Thuringian State Parliament passed the law on the Thuringian Constitutional Court (ThürVerfGHG) on June 28, 1994 and thus determined the seat of the Constitutional Court in Weimar. About a year later, on September 13, 1995, he started work.

In March 2018, the President of the Constitutional Court Manfred Aschke resigned from office upon reaching the age limit. However, the parliamentary groups in the Thuringian state parliament could not agree on a successor. This must be elected by the state parliament with a two-thirds majority . The government parliamentary groups favored the constitutional judge Elke Heßelmann, the CDU parliamentary group the constitutional judge Klaus-Dieter von der Weiden . Thus, the state parliament failed to make the timely election in accordance with Section 3 (3) sentence 3 of the ThürVerfGHG. As a result, the post of President was vacant until further notice and the court only had a temporary quorum. The court had already determined during a brief vacancy in 2010 that the court could only have a quorum temporarily. During the vacancy, the CDU favorite Klaus-Dieter von der Weiden represented the office of president. In May 2018 it became known that the CDU parliamentary group leader, Mike Mohring, intended the President of the Thuringian Higher Regional Court, Stefan Kaufmann, as a compromise candidate. However, there was a risk that no new president would be elected before the summer break and that the court would lose its capacity to act. Finally, the parliamentary group decided to support Die Linke Kaufmann. The election proposal was ultimately also supported by Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen and the SPD .

President

Legal bases and choice

Articles 79 and 80 of the Constitution of the Free State of Thuringia regulate the status, composition and jurisdiction of the Constitutional Court. These regulations are detailed in the law on the Thuringian Constitutional Court (ThürVerfGHG). The functioning of the court is regulated in the rules of procedure of the Thuringian Constitutional Court (GO VerfGH).

The president and the eight other members of the court were elected by the Thuringian state parliament with a two-thirds majority for five years until 2014 . In 2014, the term of office was increased to seven years, with only one re-election possible. Thus the maximum term of office has been reduced to 14 years. A transitional arrangement made it possible, however, for judges who had already been elected several times to be constitutional judges, to be re-elected as constitutional judges. This made the re-election of the judges Manfred Baldus , Walter Bayer and Hartmut Schwan possible . The president and two other members must be professional judges, three other members must be qualified to hold judicial office . However, the Court of Justice is mostly composed of lawyers.

Current composition

The members of the Constitutional Court at the beginning of the hearing on June 14, 2017 in Weimar (from left to right Menzel, Petermann, Schwan, Bayer, Aschke, Baldus, von der Weiden, Heßelmann, Ohler).

Types of procedure

The court decides

  1. Individual constitutional complaints ,
  2. Local constitution complaints ,
  3. Organ disputes within the country,
  4. abstract norms control requests at the request of one fifth of the members of the state parliament, a parliamentary group or the state government,
  5. concrete norms control requests on presentation of a court,
  6. Admissibility of referendums ,
  7. Constitutionality of inquiries to a committee of inquiry ,
  8. Election review complaints regarding the state elections.

See also

literature

  • Sebastian von Ammon : The constitutional complaint to the Thuringian Constitutional Court , in: Thüringer Verwaltungsblätter (ThürVBl.), Bd. 23 (2014), pp. 181-185.
  • Hans-Joachim Bauer : The Thuringian Constitutional Court , in: Landes- und Kommunalverwaltung (LKV), 1996, pp. 385–388.
  • Hans-Joachim Bauer: The case law of the Thuringian Constitutional Court on Parliamentary Law (1996 to 2003) , in: Ten Years of the Thuringian State Constitution (1993–2003), Wartburg-Verlag, Weimar 2003, pp. 125–135.
  • Lukas C. Gundling: Constitutional crisis averted in Thuringia. A short report , in: Zeitschrift für Landesverfassungsrecht und Landesverwaltungsrecht (ZLVR), Vol. 3 (2018), pp. 105–108 (digitized online ).
  • Oliver W. Lembcke : Thuringian Constitutional Court , in: Werner Reutter (Hrsg.): Landesverfassungsgerichte. Development - Structure - Functions , Springer, Wiesbaden 2017, ISBN 978-3-658-16093-7 , pp. 389-420.
  • Julia Plattner: The parliamentary investigation procedure before the constitutional court. A consideration of legal protection before and after the enactment of the law regulating the law of the investigative committees of the German Bundestag (PUAG) and in Thuringia , Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-428-11221-0 .
  • Werner Reutter: Judges at the Thuringian Constitutional Court , in: LKV 2019, pp. 496–501 ( digitized version ).
  • Hartmut Schwan : The Thuringian Constitutional Court as an “extraordinary revision instance ” , in: ThürVBl., Vol. 21 (2012), pp. 121–129.
  • Dietrich Stöffler: The case law of the Thuringian constitutional court on local law , in: Ten years of Thuringian state constitution (1993–2003), Wartburg-Verlag, Weimar 2003, pp. 107–123.
  • Klaus-Dieter von der Weiden : Inability of the Thuringian Constitutional Court to function in the event of delayed by-election of a member who has retired due to old age? , in: ThürVBl., Vol. 28 (2019), pp. 209–214.

Web links

Commons : Thuringian Constitutional Court  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Thuringia until at least May without the highest constitutional judge on mdr.de, article from April 25, 2018.
  2. ↑ Movement in the dispute over the appointment of new presidents in the Constitutional Court , article from April 19, 2018 on the Thüringer Allgemeine newspaper .
  3. ↑ ThürVerfGH, decision of April 11, 2018, VerfGH 8/18 , p. 3 and ThürVerfGH, decision of April 11, 2018, VerfGH 3/17 , p. 4.
  4. ↑ a b c Lukas C. Gundling: Constitutional crisis averted in Thuringia - a short report . In: Erfurter Gesellschaft für deutsches Landesrecht GbR (Hrsg.): Journal for state constitutional law and state administrative law (ZLVR) . No. 3 , 2008, ISSN  2511-3666 , p. 105-108 ( zlvr.de [PDF]).
  5. ↑ Continuing dispute over court presidents: Is a Thuringian constitutional crisis looming? , Article from May 24, 2018 on the Thüringer Allgemeine website.
  6. ↑ Kaufmann as a compromise: End of the dispute over the occupation of the Thuringian constitutional court president , article on mdr.de from June 21, 2018.
  7. ↑ LT-Drs. 6/5853 (accessed June 21, 2018).

Coordinates: 50 ° 58 ′ 55.2 ″  N , 11 ° 20 ′ 6 ″  E