Celebrating the Milk Maid: What Federal Constitutional Court President Limbach Doesn't Tell Us About the Court Says It All

Abstract

It's a small book. Actually, it is a very small book. Only one hundred and twenty-eight pages, it's a format so thin it could fit into a pocket. As a matter of fact, it is smaller than a copy of the Grundgesetz (German Basic Law) that a German law student would carry along to class. The book's title, however, is considerably more intrepid than the book's small stature. At the same time breathtakingly pithy and slightly immodest, the book is simply called Das Bundesverfassungsgericht (The Federal Constitutional Court). And at the top of the cover, just to make sure, the word “WISSEN” (KNOWLEDGE) appears in big letters. While one wonders how a publication of such limited size could deign to comprehensively present the important “knowledge” of the Federal Constitutional Court, the other words on the cover provide some assurance. Those words are the name of the book's author who obviously could not be more adequate for the task. The author, Jutta Limbach, is the current President of the Federal Constitutional Court presiding in her seventh year.