Change of Presidency at the Federal Constitutional Court

Press Release No. 51/2020 of 22 June 2020

Today Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier awarded the certificate of honourable discharge to the President of the Federal Constitutional Court, Prof. Dr. Dres. h. c. Andreas Voßkuhle, in Berlin. This marks the end of Voßkuhle’s 12-year term as President, presiding Justice of the Second Senate and Justice of the Federal Constitutional Court. The Federal President also awarded three certificates of appointment: former Vice-President of the Federal Constitutional Court and presiding Justice of the First Senate, Prof. Dr. Stephan Harbarth, LL.M., will become the new President of the Federal Constitutional Court, while Prof. Dr. Astrid Wallrabenstein from Goethe University (Frankfurt) will fill the position left vacant in the Second Senate by the departure of the former President. Both were elected by the Bundesrat on 15 May. The Federal President presented Mr Voßkuhle with the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Prof. Dr. Doris König, M.C.L., currently Justice of the Second Senate, will become the new Vice-President and presiding Justice of the Second Senate.

Prof. Dr. Dres. h. c. Andreas Voßkuhle was born in Detmold in 1963. He is married. After studying law at the University of Bayreuth and Ludwig Maximilian University (Munich) and completing his studies with the First State Examination in Law in 1992, he received his doctorate from Ludwig Maximilian University that same year. He was presented with the Faculty Award for his doctoral thesis “Legal protection against the judge: On the integration of the judiciary into the system of constitutional review in light of Article 19(4) of the Basic Law”, which was supervised by Peter Lerche. From 1992 to 1994, Andreas Voßkuhle was a senior research assistant at the Chair in Public Law, Business Administration Law and Environmental Law at the University of Augsburg. During that time, he took the Second State Examination in Law. In 1995, he became a policy officer at the Bavarian State Ministry of the Interior. In 1998, he qualified as a professor (Habilitation) with a thesis on “The principle of compensation”. He received the venia legendi for Public Law, Administrative Sciences and Legal Theory. Shortly thereafter, he was appointed professor at Albert Ludwig University (Freiburg); in 1999, he also became Director of the University’s Institute for Staatswissenschaft and Philosophy of Law, a position he still holds. From 2000 to 2002, he served as Dean of Academic Affairs of the Faculty of Law. In 2004, he declined the offer of a professorship at the University of Hamburg. From 2004 to 2006, Andreas Voßkuhle served as Dean of the Faculty of Law in Freiburg. In 2006 and 2007, he was both a member of Freiburg’s University Council and a fellow of the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study (Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin). Since 2007, Andreas Voßkuhle has been a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. In July 2007, he was elected Rector of Albert Ludwig University (Freiburg) and took office in April 2008.

In May 2008, Andreas Voßkuhle was appointed Vice-President of the Federal Constitutional Court and presiding Justice of the Second Senate; in March 2010, he was appointed President of the Federal Constitutional Court. Voßkuhle has served as reporting Justice in almost 40 Senate proceedings, including proceedings on preventive detention (BVerfGE 128, 326), the remuneration of professors (BVerfGE 130, 263), the surveillance of members of Parliament by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BVerfGE 134, 141), the Bundestag’s rights to receive information on arms exports (BVerfGE 137, 185) and on support missions of the Federal Police (BVerfGE 139, 194), the remuneration of judges (BVerfGE 139, 64), special parliamentary rights of the opposition (BVerfGE 142, 25), the election of federal judges (BVerfGE 143, 22), the NSA committee of inquiry (BVerfGE 143, 101), the Bundestag’s rights to receive information on financial market supervision and on the Deutsche Bahn AG (BVerfGE 147, 50) and the ban on strike action for civil servants (BVerfGE 148, 296).

During his presidency, Andreas Voßkuhle initiated numerous meetings with foreign constitutional courts, supreme courts, the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union. The Court’s Baumgarten Building in the Karlsruhe Schlossbezirk was fully renovated under his leadership; during the renovation, the Court was housed in the Kammhuber Barracks, which had been converted into the temporary Waldstadt offices (2011-2014). He spearheaded reforms of the Court’s internal organisation as well as a major redesign of the Court’s website. On his initiative, the Justices of the Federal Constitutional Court adopted a Code of Conduct for the first time (2017). During his term as President, he also oversaw citizens’ fairs marking the 60th anniversary of the Federal Constitutional Court (2011) and the 70th anniversary of the Basic Law as well as the 50th anniversary of the Baumgarten Building (2019).

Since 2012, Andreas Voßkuhle has served as a member of the Senate of the Max Planck Society, since 2014 he has been a member of the panel provided for in Article 255 TFEU, in 2015 he was appointed to the Scientific Advisory Board of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, and in 2018 he became a member of the Leopoldina, the National Academy of Sciences. In March 2017, he was awarded the Grand Decoration of Honour in Gold with Sash of the Republic of Austria. He received an honorary doctorate from Aristotle University (Thessaloniki) in November 2017 and from Leuphana University (Lüneburg) in July 2019. He was also presented with several awards, most recently the Otto Kirchheimer Award.

When his term ends, Andreas Voßkuhle will return to his professorship at Albert Ludwig University (Freiburg).

Prof. Dr. Astrid Wallrabenstein, born in Münster in 1969, has been a professor at Goethe University (Frankfurt), where she has held the Chair in Public Law with a focus on Social Law and served as Managing Director of the Institute for European Health Policy and Social Law since October 2010. Since 2012, she has been a member of the Federal Government’s Social Advisory Council. In addition, she has served as a judge at the Hesse Higher Social Court since 2013. In 2018, she was appointed Goethe Fellow at the Goethe University’s Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften Bad Homburg with her project “Migration and Justice in the Social State”. Astrid Wallrabenstein is married and has two children.