Rechtsschutz bei Verzögerung verfassungsgerichtlicher Verfahren Zugleich die Konturierung eines verfassungsrechtlichen Anspruchs auf Verzögerungsfolgenkompensation

Most recently in its RUMPF v. GERMANY judgement, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has repeatedly demanded effective legal protection against unreasonably lengthy court proceedings from the German legislator, preferably by granting redress to the concerned party to ensure court proceedings within a reasonable time-frame. Since all judicial proceedings, civil or administrative, are subject to Art. 6, para 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights as well as Art. 2, para 1 in conjunction with Art. 20, para 3 of the German Basic Law, all courts - even the constitutional courts - are bound to guarantee effective judicial protection and a court proceedings »within a reasonable time«. In the last couple of years, the workload of German constitutional courts, federal and state, has reached a high level, which has already been subject to ECtHR-proceedings. Although excessively lengthy proceedings before constitutional courts still remain an exception, in 2011 the German legislator included those proceedings in his implementation of various (originally judgemade) requirements and remedies against unnecessary delays in court proceedings. In this regard, one could already doubt if the subjection of constitutionally-based proceedings to those new legal remedies is in fact necessary. Furthermore, since state bodies are not always a suitable party, the new regulation of remedies in case of delay is not applicable to various constitutionally-based types of procedure, especially between governmental bodies (e.g. Organstreit proceedings). In future, remedies for procedural delay could therefore at most - if at all - gain importance in cases concerning the concrete review of statutes as well as constitutional complaints.