Der Blick von außen - A View From Outside

The Federal Constitutional Court will celebrate its 75th anniversary in 2026. To mark this occasion, representatives of apex courts and academia from 42 foreign jurisdictions have been invited to offer an external perspective on the Court and its work. This acknowledges the growing international interconnectedness of supreme courts in general, and of the Federal Constitutional Court in particular, over recent decades. The contributions revolve around questions such as: How does the Federal Constitutional Court interact with foreign supreme courts and their scientific communities? Which of its decisions are well received, and which provoke criticism? Has the Court's perception abroad changed over time? Have there been phases of particularly close cooperation as well as periods of indifference or estrangement? Are argumentative patterns and legal concepts adopted-and if so, in what form? Which factors appear problematic from an international perspective? Finally, the question arises as to what insights the Federal Constitutional Court and German legal scholarship can draw from the international perspective-and which they have already gained. The contributions collected in this Festschrift are thus to be understood both as reflections on and as illustrations of how a "migration of constitutional ideas" functions in practice.