The process is long and yes, sometimes parliament iterates on laws to bring them into compliance with the constitution (and sometimes those changes get struck d

The process is long and yes, sometimes parliament iterates on laws to bring them into compliance with the constitution (and sometimes those changes get struck down again) but it's patently false to claim that the constitutional court doesn't have consequences. (real life is tough a claim to argue against - what is a real life consequence?) Some consequential decision that come to my mind (without judging whether these were good or bad decision): - they derived the right to privacy (Informationelle Selbstbestimmung) based on other rights. This is now firmly established in the judicial process. - They struck down the law allowing the government to shoot down hijacked planes (no replacement) - Secret paternity test are illegal and hold no value as evidence - mass deployment of automatic number-plate recognition is illegal - they set the barrier for voting machines so high it's de facto impossible to use them - they've struck down the data mention laws multiple times since 2007. The government keeps trying but to this day there's no law in force - struck down the law requiring a cross in every classroom And these are just the bigger ones that made the press. There are a huge amount of cases that narrow down and define things like when apartments can be searched, when people can be wiretapped, what are the rights and responsilties of people living in a civil partnerships (before marriage for everyone was enacted), when and when not it's allowed to use the armed forces abroad and what restrictions on the right to assemble are allowed. The reason you might have this impression are three-fold: - sometimes a law that is unconstitutional can be made constitutional by adding some exceptions. For example a surveillance law might only be unconstitutional because it didn't have adequate measures to protect priests, therapists, lawyers and other professions with certain privileges. The law is then often revised and passes muster. - some ruling a purely procedural. The decision itself is valid but either it didn't come to be in a valid way (e.g. proper parlimentary procedure wasn't maintained) or it exceeded authority (the government acted but it would have to be a law). These are often easily fixed by going through the process again or turning a decree into a law - Lastly, the constitution might just be changed. The Constitutional Court doesn't have any higher authority than the parliament. If the parliament, following proper procedure, changes the constitution a lot of things are possible. This does require a big majority in both parliaments. Note there are some basic principles that can't be changed but they're quite limited.