ABSTRACT
Several scholars and other jurists who argue against introducing dissenting opinions in the judgments of continental European countries claim that publishing the individual opinion of all members of a judicial panel would be a practice foreign to the civil law tradition. The publication of judicial dissent has not spread to the same extent, but it is considered to be part of the 'package' of German constitutional justice which has had an especially strong impact on the common European constitutional tradition, if such a common tradition exists. In continental Europe, under the traditionally dominant influence of the French and German legal cultures, judgments are delivered in the name of the people, the republic or the monarch. Rather than the presence or absence of separate opinions, it is the quality of these, the majority judgment and the arguments used therein that determine the court's prestige and authority.
