Piercing the veil of the panel: The power of the justice referee in the German Constitutional Court

Christoph Engel ()
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Christoph Engel: Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Economics, Bonn

No 2026_02, Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Economics from Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Economics

Abstract: In apex and constitutional courts, decisions are typically taken by a panel. If the panel decides per curiam, decisions can at most be explained by the fraction of panel members that share some demographic marker. Using this approach, in the German Constitutional Court outcomes are not significantly explained by the policy preferences of the political party that has nominated the majority of the justices on the panel. This paper puts the non-result to a harder test. It exploits the fact that justices have fixed dockets, defined by subject matter. It uses a hybrid approach, combining a rich dictionary of keywords with a large language model as the umpire for the residual uncertainty, to infer the identity of the justice referee. As, for a small number of cases, the court publicizes the name of the referee, the accuracy of the method can be evaluated, and is acceptable (78.26%). Yet also the preferences of the political party that has nominated the justice referee only explain suc-cess with a request for a preliminary ruling, not success on the merits.

Date: 2026-02
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