Weak-form judicial review suggests that empowering courts to exercise rights-based judicial review does not necessarily mean that courts can assert their understanding of guaranteed rights or, where they do - as in Germany - that they always should. Instead, they could be constitutionally required to defer, at times, to another state organ's reasonable rights interpretation. Lisa Rabeneick examines this particular aspect of the broader question of how the German Federal Constitutional Court should exercise its powers of strong-form rights-based judicial review in relation to the Federal Parliament. Specifically, she proposes creating a 'blended system' of reviewing legislation under the Basic Law; to be achieved by the court implementing weak-form review in instances in which it should refrain from asserting its rights understanding in relation to the legislature.
Different state actors can reasonably disagree about what guaranteed rights mean. Lisa Rabeneick argues that the German Federal Constitutional Court should, at times, exercise weak-form judicial review and defer in its decision-making to the legislative rights understanding, which may be equally reasonable.
