The Effect of Federal Jurisdiction of the Constitutional Tribunal on the Model of Legal-Penal Protection of Life in German Federal Republic

Abstract

The model of legal-penal protection of the conceived child's life now in force in GFR has been shaped on the basis of consecutive sentences passed by the Federal Constitutional Tribunal. In a verdict brought out in 1975 FCT strongly emphasised that human life also in the prenatal period is subject to legal protection. However, force of this declaration was gradually weakened by the legislator's successive acts, whose final effect was the law of 1995 practically giving up legal-penal protection of the conceived child's life. In the Tribunal's jurisdiction also a kind of evolution can be seen − but in a different direction than e.g. in the case of the Supreme Court of the United States − which to a large degree meant acceptance of the legislator's liberalising actions. The verdict of 1975 gained a fundamental significance; in it the conceived child's life was recognised as a legal value subject to constitutional protection. It exerted a great influence on jurisdiction of constitution courts in many countries of Europe, among others in Spain, Portugal and Poland.