The Limits of Safety Standardization

The idea of a single comprehensive law on technology may have to be waived. It would either be devoid of practical substance or, if it did include substantive regulations, would be obsolete before final promulgation. However, the principles should be adhered to. Legislative procedures, for example, which follow the general clause method will be determining factors in the future as well. 

Reservation of the Law. To a great extent, technical safety law uses unspecific legal concepts in the form of general clauses. In addition, standards which set forth in concrete terms how life and health are to be protected from the hazards of technical progress are often merely technical standards which cannot claim any direct force on their own. This could constitute a violation of the principle of the general reservations of the law. 

The reservation of the law states that in specified areas the questions left open by the constitution may not be decided by the executive by means of legal measure or administrative action but are subject to formal law and therefore require a decision by the parliament. Reservation of the law thus entails parliamentary reservation. The executive—and naturally a private standardization body all the more—may not be active in the area subject to reservation or only when empowered by law. In the administration of justice, in particular by the Constitutional Court, the principle of reservation of the law is described in such a way as to make it incumbent on the legislator to make all essential decisions in the fundamental standardization areas. 

In the area of technical safety law, a violation of the reservation of the law was affirmed for the first time in a decision by the Higher Administrative Court in Munster dated August 18, 1977 [8-14], which found that Section 7 Para. 1 and Para. 2 of the Atomic Energy Law violated the constitution. In a decision dated August 8,1978 [8-15] on the subject of the decision by the Higher Administrative Court in Munster, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled in principle and by way of guideline on the constitutional context of technical safety law. This decision deserves to be quoted due to statements with significance which, for ail practical purposes, is equivalent to the law  

The decision in principle with respect to standardization, for or against legal admissibility of peaceful use of nuclear energy on the sovereign territory of the German Federal Republic is, due to its far-reaching consequences for the citizens, in particular for their freedom and equality, for general conditions of life and due to the necessarily connected type and intensity of 

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