This paper summarizes key elements of the German Federal Constitutional Court's decision on the European Central Bank's Public Sector Asset Purchase Programme. It briefly explains how it is possible for the German Court to disagree with the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union....

The German Constitutional Court is radically different from the (mostly US) courts in which panel effects have been studied so widely. On the one hand, to a large extent, ideological and gender bias are neutralized by design. On the other hand, panels are not randomly composed. This makes it...

The German Constitutional Court, we often hear, draws its considerable strength from the reaction to the German Nazi past: Because the Nazis abused rights and had been elected by the people, the argument runs, it was necessary to create a strong Court to guard these rights in the future. This...

On 14 January 2014, the Bundesverfassungsgericht ruled on the European Central Bank's OMT programme. This ruling is unprecedented in a number of respects. In ruling on sovereign debt purchasing by the ECB, the Bundesverfassungsgericht took a position on the current incompleteness and asymmetry...

The Eurozone banking and sovereign debt crisis has brought the fragility of European monetary union into sharp focus and exposed the lack of effective instruments at the European level to maintain financial stability. The policy responses of the European and national institutions included an...