Critique and Crisis: The German Struggle with Pandemic Control Measures and the State of Emergency

Abstract

SARS-CoV-2 has hit Germany hard with (as of Easter 2020) more than 120,000 confirmed cases. The entire development of the pandemic has been accompanied by a critical debate about whether the Federal Government and the Länder (states) took the appropriate measures to fight the virus. The first objective of this post is to show which legal measures are available to the Federal Government and the Länder and to briefly report which of those have been applied to. It discusses whether extraordinary times are the right moment for constitutional amendments and why a critical reflection of the current legislative changes is not only necessary but essential for the understanding of our constitution.