Rational Lawmaking Under Review ― Legisprudence According to the German Federal Constitutional Court

This bookexplores the constitutional, legally binding dimension to legisprudence in thelight of the German Federal Constitutional Court´s approach to rationallawmaking. Over the last decades this court has been remarkably active inapplying legisprudential criteria and standards when reviewing parliamentarylaws. It has thus supplied observers with a unique material to analyse thelawmakers’ duty tolegislate rationally, and to assess the virtues and drawbacks of this strand ofjudicial control in a constitutional democracy. By bringing togetherlegislation experts and public law scholars to elaborate on ‘legisprudenceunder review’, this contributed volume aspires to shed light on theconstitutionalisation of rational lawmaking as a controversial trend gainingground in both national and international jurisdictions. The book is dividedinto five parts. Part I frames the two key issues pervading the wholecollection: the intricate relationship between judicial review and democracy,on the one hand, and the possibility of improving and rationalizing the task oflegislation under the current circumstances of politics, on the other. Part IIprovides an overview of the judicial review of rational lawmaking, layingspecial emphasis on the duty of legislative justification imposed on lawmakersby the German Constitutional Court. Part III is devoted to the review of thesystemic rationality of legislation, in particular to the requirements oflegislative consistence and coherence as developed by this court. Contributionsin Part IV revolve around the judicial scrutiny of the socio-empirical elementsof rational lawmaking, with the control of legislative facts and impacts andthe problem of symbolic laws being the central topics. Finally, Part V draws onthe German case law to discuss the links between rational lawmaking, balancingand proportionality, and the interdependence between process review andsubstantive review of legislation.