European Databases | VfGH

The Austrian State is based on the fundamental idea that the exercise of state power is established by a written constitution and that all state action can be traced back to the will of the people.

• The Austrian Constitutional Court is one of the highest courts in Austria, next to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Administrative Court.
• It was established by virtue of the 1920 Constitution and was the world’s first court concentrating entirely on the review of laws for their constitutionality.
• In the following years this “Austrian model” of constitutional justice was established in many other countries across the world.


• The Court protects the individual’s fundamental rights in relation to any action taken by administrative authorities, administrative courts as well as the legislator.
• It reviews legal provisions for their constitutionality and lawfulness, it resolves disputes over the division of powers, and it verifies the results of elections.
• The Court consists of fourteen judges, currently four of them being women and ten being men.
• In 2021 the Court was assigned around 5.300 new cases and was able to close around 5.200 cases.

• Decisions of the Austrian Constitutional Court since 1980 can be found in the database “RIS” (Rechtsinformationssystem).
• Older Decisions from 1919 till 1979 are available in the database ALEX (Historische Rechts- und Gesetzestexte Online). But note that both the Austrian Constitution and the Constitutional Court were suspended from 1933 to 1945, so that no decisions were made during this period.
• Some landmark decisions are additionally uploaded on the website of the Constitutional Court.

• The database “RIS” provides the Court’s decisions in Word-, PDF- and html-format.
• The database “ALEX” provides scans of the official documents in PDF-format.
• All documents are only available in the language of the proceedings, which is German.