Abstract

(Re-)Construction of the System of Legislative Competences

New Categories for Interpretation, Application and Concurrent Legislation

The Federal Constitutional Court and constitutional jurisprudence have so far failed to establish coherent guidelines for the interpretation of the German Basic Law’s legislative competences, although their predictable interpretation and handling are indispensable for federal and state legislators. The structures of the Basic Law catalogues of legislative competences have grown historically and are increasingly hypertrophic. Thus, they cannot be met by the simplistic and sometimes arbitrary approaches of recent constitutional rulings. Instead, the article shows the essential differentiation between various types of competence provisions, which are linked either to the functioning, the objectives of the norms of ordinary law to be subsumed or the areas to be regulated by them. Within the single categories, the traditional methods of interpretation have different significance and there are different but specific criteria for the clas-sification of ordinary law. The model outlined in the article also creates the basis for a coherent management of the widespread concurrence of several federal competences.