The Constitutional Court of the State of Berlin (German: Verfassungsgerichtshof des Landes Berlin; abbreviated BerlVerfGH) is the state constitutional court of Berlin. It has its seat at the Kammergericht building in the Schöneberg district of Berlin. Since November 2019, Ludgera Selting is the president of the court.
The jurisdiction and duties of the Constitutional Court of the State of Berlin are regulated in Article 84 of the Constitution of Berlin, as well as in the Gesetz über den Verfassungsgerichtshof (VerfGHG).[1] The court is mainly responsible for deciding the following types of claims:
The Constitution of Berlin of 1 September 1950 contained in its Article 72 a mandate to establish a state constitutional court for Berlin. However, due to the special political and legal position of Berlin before the German reunification, such a court was not established and the mandate for the constitution of the court was abolished in 1974.[5] Therefore, no state constitutional court existed in Berlin until 1992.[6]
To rectify this situation, the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin passed a law on the establishment of a Berlin constitutional court in 1990, which entered into force on 2 December 1990.[7] But even before the first election of judges for the newly established court, scheduled for 21 February 1991, the law had to be amended.[7] The main reason for this were the rules on the compensation of the court's judges which were deemed to be unreasonably generous.[8]
On 26 March 1992, the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin finally elected the first nine judges of the court and on 21 May 1992 the newly established court rendered its first decision.[9] Klaus Finkelnburg was elected to serve as the court's first president and Ehrhart Körting was chosen as its first vice-president.[9]
From 2007 to 2012, a woman headed the court for the first time – Margret Diwell.[10]
The decision of 12 January 1993 (VerfGH 55/92),[α] that the prosecution of Erich Honecker, the former Chairman of the State Council of East Germany, was incompatible with human dignity as enshrined in Article 1 of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany due to his state of health, caused considerable controversy.[11]
On 16 November 2022 (VerfGH 154/21),[β] the court declared the 2021 Berlin state election void and ordered a repeat election within 90 days due to "serious systematic deficiencies in the preparation" of the 2021 election.[12][13] The repeat election happened on the last possible Sunday within this 90 days-period, thus on 12 February 2023.[13] The annulment of the election was the first court-ordered voidance of a German state election since the 1991 Hamburg state election.[12]
The Constitutional Court of the State of Berlin is composed of nine judges including its president and vice-president (Article 84(1) Constitution of Berlin).[14] Three of the nine judges must be professional judges (Berufsrichter) and three others must be qualified to hold judicial office (Befähigung zum Richteramt).[14] All judges are elected by the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin with a two-thirds majority (Article 84(1) Constitution of Berlin) for a seven-year term without the possibility of re-election.[15]
Only persons who have reached the age of 35 and are eligible for election to the Bundestag may serve as judges of the court. Men and women must each make up at least three of the Constitutional Court judges. All judges serve in an honorary capacity and only receive a small reimbursement.[15]