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Comment by DuskStar | Hacker News Reader

> The fact that the Court tries not to do something like that is because it is also a political actor searching for stability.

This sounds to me like someone saying that the Queen of England has the power to dissolve parliament - and just doesn't for political concerns. (Those political concerns being that if she ever exercises that power, it'll be removed)

At some point you have to recognize that if you can only use power in ways that don't interfere with another governmental body, that power might not really exist.

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I can see where you're coming from but this analogy does not hold up. The German Constitutional Court (GCC) does exercise its powers, but it tries not to break anything, therefore it gives the responsible actors some time to change the law/their behavior. Maybe another example: The Court decided that the (specific calculation of the) German property tax was unconstitutional. But if they just declared the whole tax void, this would have been an enormous problem for the state financing. Therefore they decided that the Government had roughly one year to set up a new system that would follow the constitutional requirements as laid out by the Court. This is what the government has done and now the requirements are fulfilled.

You originally posted a response to this.

> Rulings of the constitutional court have almost no real life consequences. If there is a negative ruling the parliament is given ample time before the unconstitutional law must be replaced. If there is any replacement within that time, the same law, formulated differently, is passed.

To say that the court does have power. But your example is an example of exactly what the OP was saying happens!

Yes you are correct, that is an example except for this part

>If there is any replacement within that time, the same law, formulated differently, is passed

Which is not accurate. Actually the new laws are substantially different, in the case of the ground tax this is also very obvious.

Did they replace a property tax with a tax paid on property?

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