Grammar of basic values of law in the corpus of decisions of the Federal Constitutional Court

The project aims to screen the corpus of constitutional law decisions in Germany since 1951, which was compiled within the framework of the 'Leibniz Linguistic Research into Constitutional Law', for various basic values using quantitative corpus analysis. On the basis of an ethical-political grammar of law, a systematic framework of (dialectical) basic legal values (liberty, security, equality, prosperity) in decisions of the Federal Constitutional Court will be empirically demonstrated and possible patterns of political preference in the balancing between conflicting basic values will be traced over time.

Researchers: Bertram Lomfeld, Christoph Möllers