Abstract:
The German Constitutional Court is not only selective in publishing its rulings. Actually more than 90% of the rulings do even come without written reasons (and are then not made publicly available either). As there is no comparison group to study, one cannot try to find causes, let alone rigorously identify them. But it is telling which types of cases are more likely to be reasoned (and published), and which characteristics of the 16 Justices have predictive power. This paper uses the 8888 rulings that have been decided between 1998 and 2024 and are posted on the Court's website. There are no glaring findings, and no clear biases in particular. Rather the data suggest a pronounced effect of Justice idiosyncrasies. The Court should consider formulating an explicit publication policy.