Rechtsstaatswidriges Feindstrafrecht oder notwendige Maßnahmen zur Terrorismusbekämpfung?

On 4 August 2009 the "Gesetz zur Verfolgung der Vorbereitung von schweren staatsgefährdenden Gewalttaten" came into force and was implemented into the legal field of terrorism, creating three new criminal offences. The stated goal of the new §§ 89a, 89b and 91 German Criminal Code is to effectively fight the threat of international terrorism in conjunction with the criminal law system aiming to preempt future attacks. The offences push criminal law into the borderline area of police emergency law and raise fundamental questions about the constitutional limits of such preventative criminal law. The paper mainly deals with the problems whether a forward displacement of such crime as defined in §§ 89a, 89b and 91 German Criminal Code is covered by the constitution, and whether the substantive criminal law is the right approach to tackling the threat of international terrorism.