{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.03157290470723306, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 5.180851063829787, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

The election of Justices to the German Federal Constitutional Court has been described as "less democratic than the papal election". Like most exaggerations, this description contains a kernel of truth. Elections to the Constitutional Court are an oddity in the German legal system since their main characteristics are not clearly determined by a set of legal norms, but rather by layer upon layer of rules of decreasingly binding force, with the most informal usages having achieved the greatest influence. This complex system has attracted intensive criticism: It is heavily influenced, even determined by political parties, shrouded in secrecy, and removed from effective parliamentary control in spite of clear constitutional provisions to the contrary. Thus, a host of alternatives have been developed, some of which look to the U.S. approach of selecting Supreme Court Justices for guidance. However, a simplistic look at the German sys-tem from a U.S. perspective, let alone a straight legal transfer, would ignore the specific adap-tation of the German solution to the German political as well as jurisprudential context, which differs from the American one in many respects. The constitutional status and practical importance of German political parties, the German preoccupation with the neutrality and the nonpolitical character of a constitutional court, as well as a more formalistic approach to law in general all rally in favor of a selection process that follows traditional German lines.  Prof. Dr. Uwe Kischel, LL.M. (Yale), attorney-at-law (New York), Mercator Professor of Public Law, European Law and Comparative Law (North-Eastern Europe), Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-University, Greifswald, Germany.