David Grundmanns

Constitutional courts make final decisions to resolve important disputes but sometimes they face governments that oppose and potentially evade judicial decisions. In response to such challenges, courts employ procedural strategies, e.g. hearings, to enhance public awareness of their decisions. Existing scholarship suggests that the effectiveness of hearings depends on decision transparency. Hearings are more likely to garner public awareness when the subject matter is accessible to laypeople and not overly technical and complex. Advancing the theory of judicial procedure, it demonstrates that case complexity alone is not sufficient to explain the effectiveness of hearings. This study contends that interest groups play a pivotal role in enhancing decision transparency. By disseminating information to the public, interest groups enhance decision clarity in otherwise complex cases. Empirical evidence from the German Federal Constitutional Court supports this assertion, showing a higher likelihood of conducting hearings in complex cases when interest groups submit briefs. This has major implications for the study of interbranch conflict at highest courts: With the assistance of interest groups, constitutional courts can effectively address threats of noncompliance through hearings, even in complex cases where it was previously assumed that courts could not engage public audiences against governmental noncompliance threats.