Non-judicial rights review. The Promise and Limits of Rights Review by Non-Judicial Public Institutions inGermany, the EU and the UN

In legal scholarship, especially in Germany given the prominent role of the Constitutional Court, rights protection and judicial review are regularly equated, and rights are, from an institutional perspective, predominantly conceived of from the perspective of courts. The proposed research project posits to shift the focus of scholarly attention from the judicial to the non-judicial realm. This shift is warranted for two reasons. First, a comprehensive and effective system of rights protection is incomplete without complementary mechanisms of non-judicial rights review (“NJRR”) as courts face structural limitations relating to access, institutional function and legitimacy. Second, the law, actors, procedures, mechanisms and contexts of NJRR have hardly been explored at all, let alone systematically and in connection with each other, even though this is an important real-world institutional phenomenon. The research project therefore aims at analyzing the various forms of NJRR by parliaments, ministerial bureaucracies, ombudsmen and data protection officers, fundamental rights agencies and human rights councils and committees in Germany, the EU and the UN from a multi-level perspective. The overarching questions of the project are which structures, instruments, principles and specific features characterize NJRR, how it is distinct from judicial review, how it functions in legal and political practice, and what prospects and limitations it has as an effective mechanism for the protection of fundamental and human rights. From a methodological perspective, the project has an empirical dimension and relies upon a broad variety of sources such as qualitative interviews with key actors as well as publicly available and internal governmental documents. In addition, it takes a multi-level perspective that analyzes the manifold multi-level interdependencies and interactions between the different national, supranational and international NJRR mechanisms. The aim is to systematically open up the field of NJRR in its various manifestations and to develop a typology that highlights its specific characteristics as a whole and of the various types of review mechanism and deepens the understanding of how NJRR functions. The project intends to contribute to the institutional dimension of human rights theory through the specific perspective of non-judicialness in rights protection and to stimulate regulatory reorientation with regard to the optimal institutional and procedural design of NJRR. It seeks to reveal basic differences between judicial and non-judicial rights review and to develop a better understanding of the interaction between judicial and non-judicial actors. Finally, it aims at enriching legislative theory with an empirically-analytically oriented analysis of the interplay between parliaments and fundamental rights that indicates the extent to which parliaments are capable of principled rights considerations that transcend party politics.

在宪法法院的重要作用中，尤其是在德国，尤其是在德国，权利保护和司法审查是定期等效的，从制度的角度来看，权利是从法院的角度构想的。拟议的研究项目构成将学术关注的重点从司法范围转移到非司法领域的重点。有两个原因有两个原因。首先，如果法院面临与访问，机构职能和合法性有关的结构性限制，则不完整的权利保护制度是不完整的。其次，几乎根本没有探索过NJRR的法律，行为者，程序，机制和环境，更不用说系统地彼此相关，即使这是重要的现实世界机构现象。因此，该研究项目的目的是通过多层次的角度来确定议会，政府的Bugreaprealies，申诉专员和数据保护官员，基本权利机构和人权委员会，以及从多层次的角度来确定NJRR的各种形式的NJRR。该项目的总体问题是，哪些结构，工具，原则和特定特征是NJRR的特征，它与司法审查的不同之处，它在法律和政治实践中的运作方式以及从方法论的角度来看，该项目的前景和局限性是什么，该项目具有经验性的维度，并且具有广泛的政府访谈，包括多种多样的来源。此外，它采用了多层次的观点，可以分析不同国家，超国家和国际NJRR机制之间的多种相互依赖性和相互作用。目的是系统地在其各种表现中开放NJRR领域，并开发一种类型学，该类型学突出了其整体和各种类型的审查机制的特定特征，并加深对NJRR的功能的理解。该项目打算通过在权利保护方面的非司法性的特定观点来为人权理论的制度维度做出贡献，并刺激NJRR的最佳制度和程序设计。它试图揭示司法和非司法权利审查之间的基本差异，并更好地了解司法和非司法行为者之间的相互作用。最后，它旨在通过对议会之间的相互作用和基本权利之间的相互作用进行实证分析的分析来丰富立法理论，这些分析表明了议会能够在多大程度上能够超越政党政治的主要权利考虑因素。