The authority of the High Court of Justice is regulated by the Constitution. It is this Court that passes on the difficulties that may arise between states in the cases of division of patrimony where changes or separations of territories are involved. It is this Court also that decides constitutional difficulties within a state when there is no competent tribunal within the state to deal with such a question. It is this Court that adjudicates disputes as to public rights that arise between different states or between a state and the Reich, when there is no other tribunal of the Reich that has jurisdiction over such a dispute. This Court in addition presides over actions instituted by the Reichstag against the President, the Chancellor and the Ministers of the Reich for culpable violation of the Constitution or the laws of the Reich.
THE JURIDICAL AND POLITICAL STRUCTURE OF THE REICH
Having described the provisions which regulate the distribution of authority and territory and mark the reciprocal relations of the Reich and the States we may now attempt to define the Reich and to give precision to its relation to the States, politically and juridically.
Formerly when one spoke of the German Constitution the question was, “Is the German Empire a federal state or a confederation of states?” To-day when speaking of the Constitution of Weimar the question is asked, “Is the Reich a federal state or a single state?”
Nearly all the German jurists have attempted to answer this question and are almost equally divided in the answer. Some of them observe that the states have no longer the power to fix the form of their governments and that they can no longer change the organic provisions of their Constitutions; that the Reich can prescribe changes in territory against their will and even order new formations of the country. The Reich is in control of sovereignty and of the life and death of German states. It may against their will deprive them of their sovereignty. The new financial constitution of the Reich, which entered into operation on October 1, 1919, has taken away finally whatever had remained of their state rights, and all financial powers of the states have passed into the hands of the Reich. The states are no longer independent states, they are only autonomous administrative bodies within the Reich. The Reich has become a single decentralized state.[15]