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Much Ado About Human Rights: The Federal Constitutional Court Confronts the European Court of Human Rights

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

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On October 14, 2004 the Bundesverfassungsgericht (BVerfG – German Federal Constitutional Court) delivered a judgment which gave rise to vivid reactions in the mass media and to a dispute between the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the German Federal Constitutional Court. In interviews, members of the Strasbourg court spoke about their disappointment in the German Court's unwillingness to implement decisions of the ECtHR while members of the German court referred to the necessity to respect national particularities. Whereas, normally, the ECtHR and the constitutional courts of the Member States of the Council of Europe are fighting side by side for human rights and, therefore, consider themselves as natural allies, this time their decisions, which seem to be incompatible, led to a dispute which attracted as much public interest as a film or theatre premiere.

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Developments
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Copyright © 2005 by German Law Journal GbR 

References

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Article 6 [Marriage and the family; children born outside of marriage]

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74 One may observe an interesting difference with the respective situation in constitutional law. See § 79 para. 1 BVerfGG (allowing the reopening of all criminal matters in which a person has been convicted on the basis of a law later declared unconstitutional by the Federal Constitutional Court; thus, the possibility of reopening one's case is not limited to the persons who lodged an individual constitutional complaint before the Federal Constitutional Court).Google Scholar

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82 The argumentation can be found in the decision of the Federal Constitutional Court in the Pakelli case, NJW 1986, 1425; see Walter, Christian, Nationale Durchsetzung, in Konkordanzkommentar para. 50 (Grote, /Marauhn, eds., forthcoming).Google Scholar

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86 There is a certain discussion in the doctrine of civil procedural law concerned with whether decisions in this field can ever be final in a material sense, because, as will be shown later, they can be reversed at any time if the child's best interest so requires. See Uwe Diederichsen, § 1696 para. 1, in Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (Palandt ed.); Decision of the Federal Court of Justice, Neue Juristisches Wochenschrift Rechtsprechung Report (NJW-RR), (1986), 1130. However, these decisions are final in a formal sense, i.e. they are not subject to an ordinary remedy.Google Scholar

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99 William Shakespeare, Julius Cesar, Act III Scene 2.Google Scholar

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