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Constitutional adjudication is a subject of fascination for scholars. Judges may annul the will of a democratically elected Parliament in counter-majoritarian fashion. Although conceived as a remedy against majoritarianism, judges also decide cases by voting. Whether they do so through simple majorities or supermajorities is not trivial.

The debate around supermajorities has awakened anew amidst theories of judicial limitation and new conceptions of judicial review. This book advances our knowledge of systems employing supermajorities in constitutional adjudication by performing a comparative analysis of ten jurisdictions and twelve supermajority models. It introduces a typology of the main models of institutional design, the reasons leading policymakers to establish them, and the impact supermajorities have on courts. It explores the question of whether supermajorities grant deference and foster consensus, or if they disable constitutional courts from exercising judicial review. By analyzing the history, practice, and effects of supermajority rules in courts, this book contributes to an ongoing conversation on the democratic implications of voting protocols in constitutional courts. It will be a valuable resource for policy-makers, scholars, and researchers working in the areas of comparative constitutional law and constitutional politics.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.

Constitutional litigation in the United States / Robert A. Kagan and Gregory Elinson -- Access to the German Federal Constitutional Court / Werner Heun -- Mobilization of the German Federal Constitutional Court / Erhard Blankenburg -- The U.S. Supreme Court's strategic decision making process / Timothy Johnson and Maron Sorenson -- Decision making at the German Federal Constitutional Court / Uwe Kranenpohl -- Junior varsity judges? : law clerks in the decisional process of the U.S. Supreme Court / Artemus Ward -- The legal assistants at the German Federal Constitutional Court : a "black box" of research? / Otwin Massing -- The implementation of U.S. Supreme Court decisions / Lawrence Baum -- Implementation of German Federal Constitutional Court decisions : judicial orders and the federal legislature / Thomas Gawron and Ralf Rogowski -- The U.S. Supreme Court and the German Federal Constitutional Court : selection, nomination and election of justices / Klaus Stewe -- The impact of the German Federal Constitutional Court on consolidation and quality of democracy / Sascha Kneip -- Constitutional courts in changing political systems / Hans J. Lietzmann

Although long considered alien to the civil law tradition, the publication of separate dissenting or concurring opinions is now permitted by the majority of European constitutional courts, the only exceptions being the Austrian, Belgian, French, Italian, and Luxembourgish constitutional courts. The decades-long history of dissenting opinions in the practice of several European constitutional courts calls for an analysis. While there is an extensive literature in the United States regarding the use of dissenting opinions, comprehensive empirical research is still absent in Europe. American scholars have conducted research from several different points of view. Legal scholars have dealt primarily with the relationship between dissenting opinions and the doctrine of binding precedent, and have tried to solve the problem of the precedential value of plurality decisions, e.g. decisions lacking a reasoning shared by the majority of the judges. Political scientists, for their part, have studied the policy-making role of judges and strategic opinion-writing. Scholars of law and economics have analyzed the costs and benefits of writing separately. Even judges themselves have often expressed their own thoughts in essays or conference speeches on the matter. ; Special Issue of the German Law Journal on 'Constitutional Reasoning' The article was commented by Prof. Hjalte Rasmussen and Louise Nan Rasmussen in the same issue: http://www.germanlawjournal.com/index.php?pageID=11&artID=1558

Examines the mandate and operations of the courts, which resolve constitutional questions as their primary mission, and their role in promoting accountability and the rule of law. Condensed version of a chapter published in "The self-restraining state: power and accountability in new democracies," Andreas Schedler and others, eds., Lynne Rienner, 1999.