Skip to Main Content
 

Global Search Box

 
 
 
 

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

Ideological Values and their Impact on the Voting Behavior of Justices of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany

Wittig, Caroline Elisabeth

Abstract Details

2009, Master of Public Administration (MPA), Bowling Green State University, Public Administration.

Decisions of highest courts have a substantial impact on their respective societies. This thesis evaluates factors that influence a court's decision and provides a novel approach to analyzing decision making processes at the Federal Constitutional Court in Germany. It poses the question whether observations made by American political scientists for the U.S. Supreme Court also apply to the German Constitutional Court. In the United States the attitudinal model has been developed as an explanation for the voting behavior of Supreme Court justices. It proposes that justices make their decisions according to their ideological values. In Germany, however, the prevalent perception is still that of the legal model, i.e. the theory that judges decide on the grounds of a defined canon of interpretive methods.

In order to determine whether the courts employ the legal or rather the attitudinal model, one decision made by the U.S. Supreme Court and one by the German Federal Constitutional Court are compared. They both deal with the widely recognized issue of abortion and thus provide an ideal basis for a comparative evaluation of decision making processes.

First, the decisions are tested for the use of interpretive methods. Next, the study asks whether the attitudinal model would also work in Germany. For this purpose, ideological values of individual German justices are measured and compared for the first time with their voting behavior. The findings are unambiguous. In both cases the legal model broke down. On the contrary, like the Supreme Court justices, the justices of the Constitutional Court voted in accordance with their ideological values. Therefore, this study demonstrates that there is a high probability that the attitudinal model can not only explain voting behavior at the U.S. Supreme Court but also decision making at the German Federal Constitutional Court.

Dr. Richard Dion Farganis (Advisor)
Dr. Stefan Fritsch (Committee Member)
Dr. David Jackson (Committee Member)
77 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Wittig, C. E. (2009). Ideological Values and their Impact on the Voting Behavior of Justices of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany [Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1241129650

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Wittig, Caroline. Ideological Values and their Impact on the Voting Behavior of Justices of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany. 2009. Bowling Green State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1241129650.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Wittig, Caroline. "Ideological Values and their Impact on the Voting Behavior of Justices of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany." Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1241129650

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)