ABSTRACT
Subnational constitutions can also just ‘formalize the administrative subordination of the subnational to the national government’. All Land constitutions prescribe that an amendment has to take the form of a law approved by a higher majority in the Land parliament than a normal bill. Land constitutions are superior legal documents. They fulfil the usual functions ascribed to constitutions. They set up polities and shape the relation between the state and its people. In the German legal tradition, a constitution should address two aspects: the structure and the functioning of the political system on the one hand, and the rights of citizens on the other. The 16 subnational constitutions determine the composition, functioning and basic tasks of the Land parliaments. The German Basic Law includes a limited number of policy principles or state goals, which have been partly created and shaped by the Federal Constitutional Court.
