Is the German Constitutional Court Partisan?

Christoph Engel

The Journal of Legal Studies, 2026, vol. 55, issue 2, 397 - 432

Abstract: The German Constitutional Court has powers that are comparable to those of the US Supreme Court. For both, justices are openly selected by political parties. Nonetheless, public and professional perceptions of them are strikingly different. Justices on the German court are not believed to be guided by the policy preferences of their nominating parties. This paper uses publicly available data to investigate whether this perception is well founded and indeed finds little evidence that the justices’ partisan affiliations predict case outcomes.

Date: 2026
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