Zum Einfluss der öffentlichen Meinung auf Entscheidungen des Bundesverfassungsgerichts. Eine Analyse von abstrakten Normenkontrollen sowie Bund-Länder-Streitigkeiten 1974 – 2010

Sternberg, Sebastian; Gschwend, Thomas; Wittig, Caroline; Engst, Benjamin G.

doi:10.5771/0032-3470-2015-4-570

Cited by 26 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…for a specific decision or policy -risks affecting their "diffuse" or aggregate support (Clark 2009: 973f.). Similar findings on judicial responsiveness were reported for the jurisprudence of the German Constitutional Court (Sternberg et al 2015). However, the literature also notes that judicial responsiveness tends to be incremental.…”

Section: Political Context: Public Debate and Diffuse Legitimacysupporting

confidence: 77%

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ECJ Judges Read the Morning Papers. Explaining the Turnaround of European Citizenship Jurisprudence

et al. 2018

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Recent jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) marks a striking shift towards a more restrictive interpretation of EU citizens' rights. The Court's turnaround is not only highly relevant for practical debates about 'Social Europe' or 'welfare migration', but also enlightening from a more general, theoretical viewpoint. Several recent studies on the ECJ have argued that the Court is largely constrained by member state governments' threats of legislative override and non-compliance. We show that an additional mechanism is necessary to explain the Court's turnaround on citizenship.While the ECJ extended EU citizens' rights even against strong opposition by member state governments, its recent shift reflects changes in the broader political context, i.e. the politicisation of free movement in the European Union (EU). The article theorizes Court responsiveness to politicisation and demonstrates empirically, how the Court's jurisprudence corresponds with changing public debates about EU citizenship.

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Section: Political Context: Public Debate and Diffuse Legitimacysupporting

confidence: 77%

“…about the acceptance and long-term support of their jurisprudence by the general public. While both mechanisms are highly plausible theoretically, they are impossible to distinguish empirically (Epstein and Martin 2011: 280-281;Sternberg et al 2015: 589-590).…”

Section: Political Context: Public Debate and Diffuse Legitimacymentioning

confidence: 99%

ECJ Judges Read the Morning Papers. Explaining the Turnaround of European Citizenship Jurisprudence

et al. 2018

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“…Our work also opens up new avenues for further research. First, previous research on European courts has mainly focused on the limitations of courts in separation-of-powers games, namely how public opinion may shape courts' decision making (Brouard, 2009;Staton and Vanberg, 2008;Sternberg et al, 2015;Vanberg, 2005). Our research shows that there is also a theoretical need to understand the opposite direction.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

“…Scholars have not investigated the effect of court decisions on public opinion. If at all, they have examined the role of public support for constitutional court decision making in a separation-of-powers framework (Staton and Vanberg, 2008;Brouard, 2009;Sternberg et al, 2015;Vanberg, 2005). In these studies, the authors examine whether constitutional courts have to adjust their decision making in accordance with public opinion, or rather if the opposite effect applies.…”

Section: Court Decisions Governmental Policy and Legitimacymentioning

confidence: 99%

The legitimacy‐conferring capacity of constitutional courts: Evidence from a comparative survey experiment1

Sternberg

Brouard

Hönnige

2021

European J Political Res

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Can constitutional court decisions shape public opinion on a governmental policy? Previous studies have focused on the US Supreme Court, which enjoys a high degree of public support as the major resource of power for courts. In this study, we examine the extent to which courts can influence public opinion regarding a government bill at European courts. First, we argue that the public support for courts also allows them to move public opinion on policies into the direction of their decisions. This works in both directions: they can confer legitimacy to a policy that they support, but they can also de‐legitimize a policy that they oppose. Second, we argue that this mechanism strongly depends on the amount of support that a court receives. It only has an effect for courts that possess a higher institutional legitimacy and among the group of citizens trusting a court. We test our arguments by combining a most different systems design for France and Germany with a survey priming experiment on a school security bill. France and Germany are selected for a most different systems design as they exhibit different institutional designs as well as different levels of support for the court at the aggregate level. The survey experiment is implemented within large national election surveys, the German Internet Panel and the French National Election Study. Both experiments contain more than 2,600 respondents each. Our survey experiment primes for decision outcomes and different institutions to understand whether there are differences between an institution supporting and opposing a policy and between a court and alternative institutions. Our findings confirm that with higher public support, courts can move the opinion of citizens to both legitimize and de‐legitimize a policy. This effect can be found at the aggregate level for a court enjoying higher public support, but also at the individual level for respondents with higher trust in the court. Interestingly, courts can even move the opinion of citizens with strong prior attitudes in the opposite direction, if these citizens highly trust the court. These findings have implications beyond the study itself. First, they confirm that the legitimacy‐conferring effect can also be observed for European courts, not only for the US Supreme Court. Second, they show that the relevance of a mechanism identified for a single case, like the US Supreme Court, might only hold for specific conditions. As public support for courts strongly varies across countries in Europe, we also expect the impact of any mechanism relying on public support to strongly vary, as we can observe in our own analysis.

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“…Richterinnen und Richter an Verfassungsgerichten beeinflussen durch ihre Rechtsprechung gesellschaftliche und politische Prozesse in demokratischen Systemen. Zugleich sind sie zur Sicherung ihrer Legitimität und Durchsetzung von Entscheidungen auf öffentliche Unterstützung angewiesen (Vanberg 2001(Vanberg , 2005Sieberer 2006;Sternberg et al 2015;Krehbiel 2016). Dabei richtet sich diese Unterstützung sowohl an die juristische Institution, aber dadurch auch an die Richterinnen und Richter.…”

Section: K 4 Ausblickunclassified

Die Besetzung des Bundesverfassungsgerichts

Engst¹,

Gschwend²,

Sternberg³

2019

Polit Vierteljahresschr

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Zusammenfassung Welche Kandidierenden wünscht sich die Öffentlichkeit als Richterinnen und Richter am Bundesverfassungsgericht? Verfassungsgerichte benötigen öffentliche Unterstützung. Diese ergibt sich auch aus der Legitimität der gewählten Richterinnen und Richter. Wir argumentieren, dass politische Akteure durch (nicht-)institutionalisierte Auswahlkriterien die (1) juristische und (2) politisch-ideologische Ausrichtung des Gerichts bestimmen. Kandidierende besitzen Eigenschaften beider Dimensionen. Durch ein Discrete-Choice-Experiment ermitteln wir die öffentlich präferierten Eigenschaften. Wir zeigen, welche Rolle die politische Position von Befragten bei der Bewertung von Kandidierenden spielt und vergleichen die "ideale Richterin" mit aktuellen Richterinnen und Richtern sowie Kandidierenden rund um Stephan Harbarths Wahl. Die Ergebnisse erweitern unser Verständnis von gerichtlicher Legitimität.

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Zum Einfluss der öffentlichen Meinung auf Entscheidungen des Bundesverfassungsgerichts. Eine Analyse von abstrakten Normenkontrollen sowie Bund-Länder-Streitigkeiten 1974 – 2010

Cited by 26 publications

References 0 publications

ECJ Judges Read the Morning Papers. Explaining the Turnaround of European Citizenship Jurisprudence

ECJ Judges Read the Morning Papers. Explaining the Turnaround of European Citizenship Jurisprudence

The legitimacy‐conferring capacity of constitutional courts: Evidence from a comparative survey experiment1

Die Besetzung des Bundesverfassungsgerichts

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