All Higher Administrative Courts are equal? Eine vergleichende Untersuchung zur unterschiedlichen Wahrnehmung oberverwaltungsgerichtlicher Rechtsprechung innerhalb des deutschen Rechtssystems

This article addresses the question if and to what extent there are differences in the perception of rulings by higher administrative courts within the German legal system. For this purpose, different indicators are taken into account. They include not only the number of published court decisions in the JURIS database and scholarly journals, but also the amount of their citations in judicial and scholarly discussion. Empirical findings reveal a rather differentiated picture. While courts from the large states with high population numbers dominate when absolute indicator values are considered, we observe considerable shifts towards the courts from the smaller states if differences in population numbers or publications in the „JURIS“ database are taken into account.