Empirical Research on the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany

A Short Report on the State of the Art

Abstract

The article undertakes an overall view of the political science contributions to federal constitutional court research in the last 15 years. It assigns the development strands to different designs and theoretical paradigms. After a brief introduction into the relationship between the rule of law and constitutional courts and a short review of the relevant impulses and favoring factors within the German-speaking research landscape for this branch of research, three research fields – rationalities of action, networks, and impact – are examined in more detail and their innovations, as well as desiderata, are discussed.