The Federal Constitutional Court

The Federal Constitutional Court's Library

The Federal Constitutional Court’s library was founded in 1951 when the Federal Constitutional Court was established. It is a scientific in-house library (i.e. it is not open to the public) which specialises in public law, constitutional and administrative law, general theory of the state and of society, politics and contemporary history.

At present (January 2010), the library holdings consist of approximately 371,000 volumes; they are increased by approximately 6,000 to 7,000 volumes every year. The library currently holds subscriptions of about 1,400 periodicals; approximately 430 of them are law and social-science journals from Germany and abroad, the others are parliamentary papers and the official publications of the Federal Government and the German Länder (states).

The focus of the library holdings is on public law, and in particular on domestic and foreign constitutional law. Apart from this, the library’s acquisition policy is to cover a broad range of subjects in order to facilitate the consideration of non-juridical aspects in the appraisal of the facts that are the basis of the court proceedings.

Another part of the library is a press archive “for collecting all material concerning the Court” (§ 18 of the Federal Constitutional Court’s Rules of Procedure), which has also been maintained since 1951. A daily press digest is produced on the basis of 30 to 40 daily and weekly newspapers.

In principle, the library and the press archive may only be used by the members and staff of the Federal Constitutional Court.

Bibliotheksservice-Zentrum Baden-Württemberg (BSZ), a service provider for libraries, archives and museums in the Southwest German Library Network (Südwestdeutscher Bibliotheksverbund – SWB), maintains a union catalogue which contains all titles that are available in the Federal Constitutional Court’s library. These titles can be searched via the local electronic user catalogue, which also shows each book’s lending status. This applies to all books and periodicals that have been acquired since 1951 and to all essays that have been catalogued, and indexed by subject-matter, since August 1996. At present (January 2010), approximately 470,000 titles (about 196,000 of which are essays) have been recorded, which means that currently, the Federal Constitutional Court’s library has the largest juridical online catalogue in the German-speaking area at its disposal.

For the general public, two online catalogues have been made available in co-operation with the BSZ: The Katalog der Bibliothek des Bundesverfassungsgerichts (Catalogue of the Federal Constitutional Court’s Library) and the Gemeinsamer Katalog des Bundesgerichtshofs und des Bundesverfassungsgerichts (Joint Catalogue of the Federal Court of Justice and of the Federal Constitutional Court).