Entscheidungen des Niedersächsischen Staatsgerichtshofs

This is the fifth volume in the series of publications by the federal state court in Lower Saxony on rulings it pro-nounced which it considers worthy of publication. This book covers court rulings made between 2009 and 2017. In this period, the federal state court in Lower Saxony focused on addressing the rights of the state’s parlia-ment to regulate its government and, in particular, the rights of the parliamentary minority. To be more precise, several cases centred on MPs’ and factions’ parliamentary right to ask questions and the government’s obligation to respond to them according to article 24, paragraph 1 of the Lower Saxon constitution, while others revolved around the right to commission case studies and the reasons for such studies being refused according to article 24, paragraphs 2 and 3 of the same constitution. In other proceedings, the court was able to clarify fundamental questions relating to the parliamentary right of investigation, and reinforce and further develop its previous rulings on the rules and principles of municipal equalisation payments.