Between Facts and Norms - Contributions to a ... - Blogs Unpad

240Chapter 6collective goods (sec. 6.2). Under the third aspect, the role of theconstitutional court is seen-especially in the United States-asthat of protecting the democratic legislative procedure; at stakehere is the renewal of a republican, hence noninstrumental,understanding of the political process as a whole (sec. 6.3).6.1 The Dissolution of the Liberal Paradigm of Law6.1.1Constitutional courts normally fulfill several functions at once.Although different powers converge in the task of authoritativelyinterpreting the constitution and thus also preserving the coherenceof the legal order, lumping these powers together inside oneinstitution is not immediately compelling from the perspective ofconstitutional theory. If we take the Federal Constitutional Courtas an example, we can distinguish three tasks: settling intragovernmentaldisputes or Organstreitigkeiten (including disputes betweenthe federal government and the Lander) ; reviewing the constitutionalityof norms (in what follows, we will be primarily concernedwith legal statutes) ; and constitutional complaints. Least problem-. atic from the standpoint of the separation of powers is the responsibilityfor constitutional complaints and for concrete judicialreview (i.e., for cases in which a lower court suspends its proceedingsand petitions the Constitutional Court to rule on the constitutionalityof a law that is relevant to the particular case) .2 Here theConstitutional Court functions to preserve the consistency of law.Regardless of its authority to declare statutes invalid in these typesof procedures, too, the Constitutional Court, together with thehigher federal courts, represents what one might consider thereflexive apex in the hierarchy of adjudication, and, as such, itassumes the tasks of self-scrutiny for the judiciary as a whole. In asimilar way, the Government leaders, as the head of the executivebranch, are responsible for the administration's task of self-review.That the Constitutional Court rules on cases ofintragovernmentaldisputes in the broader sense may be more problematic. Thispower touches on the separation of governmental functions, but aplausible justification for it rests on the technical requirement to