Ultra vires act

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An ultra vires act is a decision that is outside the competencies of the authority that makes the decision.

background

Ultra vires (“beyond violence”) refers to the limitation of the legal capacity of legal persons to their respective tasks and purposes in the Anglo-American legal system. The Mangold decision of the European Court of Justice, for example, initially assumed an act of ultra vires, which the German Federal Constitutional Court, however, denied. By contrast, provided the Federal Constitutional Court found in its decision of 5 May 2020 that an ultra vires act of the government bond purchase program - had been held by the European Court of Justice (Public Sector Purchase Program PSPP).

On December 6, 2016, the Danish Supreme Court (SCDK) delivered an ultra vires judgment against the European Court of Justice. It was about a judgment for age discrimination in the case of the Ajos company, a civil law case. The Danish judgment saw the corresponding EU laws (Article 6, Paragraph 3, TEU) as not covered by the Accession Act of Denmark, despite a different interpretation by the ECJ. Even here, a national supreme court argued for the primacy of its own jurisdiction and negated a judgment of the European Court of Justice.

Not only the German and Danish Constitutional Courts, but also the Constitutional Court of Italy (ICC), in its jurisprudence since the Frontini case of 1973, asserts an ultra vires reservation of its own constitution, as also in the conflict with the ECJ in the Taricco case (2015) became clear, which was defused by the ECJ through a conciliar case law after the resubmission by the ICC 2017 - the national courts were granted the freedom of decision with regard to questions of retrospectiveness .

Individual evidence

  1. ultra vires / ultra vires act. Legal dictionary lexexakt.de, accessed on April 27, 2017 .
  2. 2nd Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court: Decisions of the ECB on the government bond purchase program are incompetent. May 5, 2020, accessed May 5, 2020 .
  3. Madsen, Olsen, Sadl: Legal Disintegration? The Ruling of the Danish Supreme Court in AJOS , Verfassungs Blog, January 30, 2017
  4. Marco Bassini: The Taricco Decision: A Last Attempt to Avoid a Clash between EU Law and the Italian Constitution , Verfassungsblog, January 28, 2017
  5. Chiara Amalfitano, Two Courts, Two Languages? The Taricco Saga Ends on a Worrying Note , Verfassungsblog, June 5, 2018