Summary study book Constitutions Compared (5th Edition) of Aalt Willem Heringa - ISBN: 9781780688831, Edition: 5, Year of publication: - (Tutorial 2- Germany)
Extended Lecture Notes on Comparative Constitutional Law
Tutorial 5: Netherlands, ISBN: 9781780688831 Comparative Government (PUB1002/2020-200)
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Maastricht University (UM)
European Law School
Comparative Government (PUB1002/2020200)
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Tutorial 2: Germany
Germany
Overview............................................................................................................................3
3.1 National Unification......................................................................................................3
3.2 Division and Reunification............................................................................................5
3.3 The Basic Law...............................................................................................................5
3.1 German Federalism: The Bundesrat (legislative institution)..........................................9
3.2 Federalism and the Bundestag (directly elected parliament).........................................9
3.3 The competences of the Federal Lawmaker.................................................................11
3.4 Federalism and the Election of Federal President........................................................11
Federalism and the Executive and Judicial System............................................................13
Parliaments and lawmaking.............................................................................................13
3.1 The Bundestag............................................................................................................13
3.2. Election System..........................................................................................................15
3.2.1. Seat distribution.....................................................................................................15
3.2.2 The Threshold..........................................................................................................17
3.3 The Bundersrat...........................................................................................................17
3.4 Federal Law-making...................................................................................................19
3.4.1 The legislative process.............................................................................................19
3.4.2. The Bundesrat.........................................................................................................21
German Lawmaker (a summary of what is said above).....................................................23
3.4.3 The President...........................................................................................................23
3.5. Political Parties..........................................................................................................25
Chapter 5. Governments, their Parliaments and their Heads of State................................25
3.1 The Federal President.................................................................................................25
3.2. The Chancellor and his/her Government....................................................................27
3.3 Ministerial Accountability...........................................................................................27
3.4. Parliamentary Scrutiny..............................................................................................29
3.5. Confidence question...................................................................................................29
3.1. The Court system.......................................................................................................31
3.2. Constitutional Review................................................................................................31
3.3 International Treaties and the ECHR...........................................................................34
3.4 European Union Law...................................................................................................34
,Human Rights...................................................................................................................36
Chapter 1 of the Constitution............................................................................................36
Federation vs Unitary State..............................................................................................37
,Overview o The Federal Republic of Germany
o Constitution date back to 1949
o Separate principalities, city-states and other entities
o Sequence of alliances between German states in different
configuration
o The desire for national unification was inspired by the French
Revolution
o Rivalry between Prussia and Austria for leadership in the region
o Prussia asserted dominance in the northern part of the lands in
question and forged a German nation- state to the exclusion of
Austria
3.1 Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation
National o Weak central institutions
Unification o The influence of the Emperor, who was elected by a body of prince-
electors, mostly depended on how much power he personally held
as the monarch of his own principality
o The Thirty Years’ war tore the Empire apart
o 1648 Peace of Westphalia recognized the sovereignty of the
individual principalities (Austria)
o Emperor Francis I of separate Austria
o The powerful Kingdom of Prussia remained independent
o Most other states of the former Holy Roman Empire united under
French pressure to form the Confederation of the Rhine
o The Confederation, which became a French vassal, collapsed in
1813 as Napoleon suffered military defeat
1815 the Congress of Vienna
o German confederation (present day Germany+ western part of
Prussia and the western part of Habsburg Austria) replaced the
former Holy Roman Empire
Features of German confederation
o Central assembly called Bundestag/ Confederal Diet
(representatives of several states)
o In 1848 a liberal revolutionary movement sought to establish a
unified German nation-state
Austro-Prussian War of 1866
o Prussia defeated Austria, left the German Confederation and
together with its smaller allies in the northern half of present-day
, Germany formed the North German Confederation
Germany’s defeat in World War I
o Fall of the imperial monarchy in 1918, Germany adopted a
republican form of government
o Instead of an Emperor, the Republic had a directly elected President
as its head of state
o The government was headed by a chancellor and was this time
accountable to the directly elected parliament
o Suffering from poor popular support for a republican form of
government and a multi-party system, the Weimar Republic’s
institutional design proved too fragile to withstand political
extremism at a time of economic crisis
Adolf Hitler as
chancellor and the
the instability of a
resulting takeover
succession of
Fragmentation of of the National
governments that
the parliament Socialists in 1933,
were appointed by
into a huge with Germany
the President and
number of small becoming a
were voted out of
political parties dictatorship that
office by
lasted until its
parliament
defeat in World
War II in 1945
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