Constitutional Court of the State of Berlin

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Constitutional Court of the State of Berlin in the building of the Chamber Court

The Constitutional Court of the State of Berlin (BerlVerfGH) is the State Constitutional Court of Berlin . It is located in the building of the Court of Appeal at Heinrich-von-Kleist-Park in the Schöneberg district .

Responsibilities

The competence and tasks of the Constitutional Court are regulated in Article 84 of the Constitution of Berlin (VvB), as well as in the law on the Constitutional Court of Berlin (VerfGHG). The Constitutional Court is responsible for deciding on

composition

The President and the eight other members of the court are elected by the Berlin House of Representatives with a two-thirds majority for a term of seven years. Three members must be professional judges, three other members must be qualified to hold judicial office. It is also stipulated that women and men must each have at least three constitutional judges. The re-election of the constitutional judges is not permitted.

Members of the Constitutional Court
Surname function elected until at the same time too
Ludgera Selting President 2026 Vice President at the Berlin Regional Court
Robert Seegmüller Vice President 2021 Judge at the Federal Administrative Court
Ahmet Alagun Judge 2021 Judge at the Central District Court
Margarete von Galen judge 2021 Lawyer
Sönke Hilbrans Judge 2021 Lawyer
Jürgen Kipp Judge 2021 former President of the Higher Administrative Court Berlin-Brandenburg
Sabrina Schönrock judge 2021 University lecturer, Berlin School of Economics and Law
Christian Burholt Judge 2026 Lawyer
Ulrike Lembke judge 2027 University professor, Humboldt University Berlin

history

The constitution of Berlin of September 1, 1950 already contained in its article 72 the mandate to set up a constitutional court. Due to the special political and legal position of the State of Berlin, however, despite several political initiatives, such a court did not come about until German reunification . The possibility of Article 99 of the Basic Law (GG) to assign jurisdiction over disputes under state constitutional law to the Federal Constitutional Court was also not used.

On November 8, 1990, the Berlin House of Representatives passed the law on the Constitutional Court of Berlin. The law had to be amended before the constitutional judges were first elected. The main reason for this was the regulation on expense allowances for judges. It should correspond to that of the MPs, for the President and the Vice-President of the Constitutional Court even higher rates were provided. The reimbursement of the Berlin constitutional judges would have been far higher than those of the members of other state constitutional courts, which met with harsh public criticism. This regulation has therefore been revised, as has the rule on the majority requirement for the election of constitutional judges, for which a three-quarters majority of the voters was originally intended. As part of the amendment, the required majority was reduced to two thirds of the voters.

The constitution of the Constitutional Court was also delayed because the first judge election was preceded by a month-long dispute between the parliamentary groups represented in the Chamber of Deputies over the question of who could propose how many candidates. The ruling coalition of the CDU and SPD at the time would have been able to draw up the list of proposals on its own, as it was able to collect more than two thirds of the mandates. Ultimately, however , an agreement was reached with the opposition to include a proposal from the Liberals and one from the Greens ; only the PDS came away empty-handed.

In May 1992 the Constitutional Court finally started its work. The first President of the Constitutional Court was Klaus Finkelnburg , and Ehrhart Körting was Vice-President . Other constitutional judges in 1992 included Hans-Joachim Driehaus , Klaus Eschen and Philip Kunig .

The decision that criminal prosecution of the former chairman of the GDR State Council , Erich Honecker , was incompatible with the human dignity of Article 1 of the Basic Law due to his state of health caused controversial debates both in public and in jurisprudence .

President

Vice President

literature

  • Helge Sodan (ed.): Ten years of constitutional jurisdiction in Berlin. Speeches on the occasion of the ceremony on May 24, 2002 . Heymanns, Cologne 2002, ISBN 3-452-25399-6 .
  • Sebastian Wille: The Berlin Constitutional Court . Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-87061-424-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Members of the Constitutional Court. Constitutional Court of the State of Berlin, accessed on March 13, 2020 .

Coordinates: 52 ° 29 ′ 32.8 "  N , 13 ° 21 ′ 25.9"  E