Bundesverfassungsgericht

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Library

The Court’s library was set up when the Federal Constitutional Court was established in 1951. It is an academic in-house library not open to the public that specialises in literature on public, constitutional and administrative law, the general theory of state and of society, and on politics and contemporary history.

The library’s collection currently comprises approximately 400,000 volumes; it grows by approximately 5,000 volumes every year. The library has subscriptions to about 800 periodicals; besides parliamentary publications and the official publications of the Federal Government and the German Länder, these include approximately 450 legal and social science journals from Germany and abroad.

The library’s collection is focused on public law, particularly domestic and international constitutional law. In addition, the library acquires books covering a broad range of subjects, which enables the Court to consider the facts of a case from non-legal viewpoints as well.

Another part of the library is the press archive, which was also set up in 1951 for collecting all material concerning the Court (cf. § 18 of the Rules of Procedure of the Federal Constitutional Court). Daily press clippings are made using 30 to 40 newspapers and magazines.

The Baden-Württemberg Library Service Centre, a service provider for libraries, archives and museums in the Southwest German Library Network maintains a catalogue for the network which lists all publications available at the library. Users can browse these using the local electronic user catalogue, which comprises all books and journals available at the library, as well as all essays that have been catalogued since August 1996. At present, approximately 800,000 titles (including approximately 400,000 essays) are listed, making it one of the largest online legal catalogues in the German-speaking area.

Two online catalogues are available to the public: the Catalogue of the Federal Constitutional Court’s Library and the Joint Catalogue of the Federal Court of Justice, the Federal Constitutional Court and the Federal Administrative Court.