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Part front matter for Part Three Comparative Law—The Openness of German Constitutional Law
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Published:December 2011
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Some scholars argue that, for all the community-defining work performed by constitutions, all constitutive charters also naturally frame a society’s relationship with other societies and the international community, including setting the stage for the jurisprudential encounters that we take to be the essence of transnational law. It must be noted, however, that some constitutions do this more explicitly than others. The German Grundgesetz (GG—Basic Law or constitution) of 1949, which became the constitution for a united Germany in 1990, is one of these. The openness of Germany’s postwar constitution is secured by a number of provisions, perhaps most poignantly by the Preamble, which declares that the German people adopted the Basic Law in order to “promote world peace as an equal partner in a united Europe.” Elsewhere, the Basic Law makes the general rules of international law “an integral part of federal law” (Art. 25); raises the possibility that the Federal Republic’s political relations and policy-making might be regulated by international treaties (Art. 59); permits the transfer of sovereign powers to systems of collective security like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) (Art. 24); and obliges the Federal Republic to accede to agreements providing for general, comprehensive, and compulsory international arbitration (Art. 24). Most spectacularly, the Preamble’s commitment to the “European project” is to be realized in accordance with the lengthy, complex, and frequently amended terms of Article 23.
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