• Administration, ministries, politics:
  Start with the Hambach submission and its extensions as well as the legislative resonance in Berlin.
• Lawyers and academia:
  Begin with the scientific basis of the method and the Systemic Legal Development research series.
• Journalists and media:
  For a quick overview, the concise case summaries and the section on the paradoxical silence of the administration are a good starting point.
• Interested citizens:
  A good entry point is Joy as an indicator of learning systems and Ontocentrism – there it becomes clear why this work goes beyond classic environmental policy.
• International contacts:
  Relevant are the theoretical references (ecological integrity, systems theory) and the Zenodo community “Systemic Legal Development” .

Practice cases 2025 – where the method is already in use

From administration to legislation and the courts: The practice cases show how Art. 20a GG becomes effective as functional protection of the natural co-world.

Systemic Legal Development does not remain theoretical. In 2025, it was applied in several concrete cases: as preventive review impulses under § 13 VwVfG in conjunction with Art. 20a GG, and as resonance in legislation and administrative practice.

• Olympics Bavaria
  Citizen submission on Art. 20a GG in the context of the planned Olympic bid and the sustainable planning of public infrastructure.
  ➜ Short dossier Olympics Bavaria
• Hambach / Rhenish mining area (NRW)
  Systemic submission and two extensions on ongoing earth movements, Rhine water transport pipeline, toxic-waste scandal and work on public holidays in the so-called “Sündenwäldchen”.
  ➜ Hambach dossier
  ➜ DOI series: Main submission · First extension · Second extension
• Murnauer Moos / upper Loisach (Bavaria)
  Submission on the hydrological integrity of the moor and the Loisach, including cumulative assessment of water abstraction, river engineering and planned major projects in the upper catchment.
  ➜ Dossier Murnauer Moos / upper Loisach
• Berlin – legislative resonance
  Tree decision and Climate Adaptation Act as an example of how civil-society impulses from Art. 20a GG flow into legislation.
  ➜ Case Berlin – legislative resonance
• Munich – judicial resonance (city trees)
  A decision by the Bavarian Higher Administrative Court makes municipal tree protection by-laws a docking point for function-protecting case law: through the protection of individual trees, courts can examine how far a city may interfere with its own foundations of life.
  ➜ Case Munich – judicial resonance
• Munich / Eisbach – administrative resonance
  Disappearance of the Eisbach wave after riverbed clearance as a teaching case on irreversibility and preventive responsibility in administrative action.
  ➜ Case Munich – administrative resonance

Additional texts and documents are documented in the research series on Systemic Legal Development .

Resonance physics – reality of law

Law operates in a symbolic reality – norms, concepts, procedures. This needs to be tied back to physical reality: water balance, soils, climate, ecological carrying capacity.

A rule-of-law state can only be stable if it takes the functional laws of its foundations of life seriously. If it ignores them, it loses not only ecological, but systemic legitimacy.

Systemic Legal Development therefore links legal self-reference with the state’s physical self-dependence: it reminds us that law, too, lives off the same conditions as we do – water, regeneration, intact cycles.

Excursus Tehran – when politics merely manages ecological catastrophes

In Iran, the government is discussing relocating the capital Tehran, because water balance, subsidence and infrastructure have reached their limits. The president speaks of a situation in which the country “has no choice”: groundwater has been overused for decades, rivers have been engineered, land has been sealed – the city is literally beginning to sink.

Tehran thus stands for a point at which politics can no longer provide precaution, but has to manage an already manifest ecological catastrophe: through the attempt at a spatial “reset” towards the coast (Makran region). The ecological and social risks are not solved, but shifted – from an overused catchment to a vulnerable coastal strip.

From the perspective of Systemic Legal Development, Tehran marks precisely the threshold that a constitution-guided understanding of precaution is intended to prevent. Art. 20a GG is designed so that the state must safeguard the functionality of the natural foundations of life before irreversible damage occurs – not only respond when entire cities are on the verge of becoming uninhabitable.

The excursus makes it clear: Law operates in symbols, but it is bound to physics. Where the state fails to think water balance, soils and river basins as an interconnected system, the co-world tips – and with it political room for manoeuvre. The submissions documented here – from the fossil legacy case Hambach / NRW to the functional case Murnauer Moos / upper Loisach – seek to shift this tipping point preventively: away from the subsequent management of ecological catastrophe, towards constitution-guided precaution that takes the co-world seriously as a carrier of the foundations of life.

📘 Full-length version of the excursus: Tehran as a warning case – Zenodo paper

Between administration, legislation and the judiciary, law begins to learn ecologically.
Systemic Legal Development currently demonstrates this in five places:

• Hambach (NRW) – administration reacts visibly for the first time to functional risks (Art. 20a GG as a review benchmark).
• Ruhr region (NRW) – mine water management and eternal burdens are addressed as a state responsibility for functions.
• Murnauer Moos / upper Loisach (Bavaria) – water balance, moor functions and infrastructure are brought together systemically.
• Munich (Bavaria) – two levels:
  • Judicial resonance: BayVGH city trees – functional connections become justiciable.
  • Administrative resonance: Eisbach / irreversibility as a teacher.
• Berlin – preventive legal application at the legislative level.

Case Berlin – legislative resonance: when law learns from below

The Berlin tree decision triggered a legislative impulse: the House of Representatives expanded the tasks of the Berlin Water Company in the Berlin Climate Adaptation Act – towards a decentralised, nature-based management of rainwater with the aim of protecting and expanding near-natural water cycles.

This is an example of preventive legal application at the legislative level: a civil-society impulse reminds politics of the precautionary mandate under Art. 20a GG and is inscribed functionally into existing structures – without new rights of action, but with clear responsibility within the system.

🌀 Case Munich – administrative resonance: irreversibility as a teacher

After a routine riverbed clearance in autumn 2025, Munich’s Eisbach wave – a symbol of urban vitality – disappeared. Measurements and technical interventions aim to restore it, but experts consider it possible that flow conditions have permanently changed. A wave may return, but not the same one.

The case shows that everyday administrative action – here under the label “maintenance” – can trigger irreversible system shifts. Art. 20a GG obliges the state to precaution not only against damage, but against the loss of ecological complexity. The Eisbach wave thus becomes an example of how maintenance without system understanding can turn into destruction. Law that wants to learn must understand its own interventions as part of ecological dynamics.

Law cannot preserve every wave. But it can learn when and how human intervention alters dynamics it does not fully understand. The Eisbach wave reminds us that any system that is cleaned too thoroughly can lose its memory.

Category: administrative resonance · location: Munich · author: Hans Leo Bader · date: November 2025

Case Munich – judicial resonance: city trees as a test case

In a decision of 13 November 2025 (BayVGH, 2 CS 25.1851), the Bavarian Higher Administrative Court provisionally stops a backyard building project in Munich. A recognised nature conservation organisation challenges the planning permission because it also authorises the felling of protected trees under the city’s tree protection ordinance. The court orders that the action be granted suspensive effect – the trees remain standing for the time being.

The Senate classifies the tree protection ordinance as a environment-related provision of state law. Under the Environmental Appeals Act, the organisation can thus not only challenge tree protection as such, but also have the question examined whether there is any entitlement to planning permission at all – in particular with regard to integration under § 34 BauGB. City trees thus become a test case for how deeply a city may encroach on its own foundations of life.

Category: judicial resonance · location: Munich · level: Higher Administrative Court (state law) · date: November 2025

Hambach / NRW – systemic submission & resonance

On 17 October 2025, a submission on the Hambach open-cast mine was filed under § 13 VwVfG NRW in conjunction with Art. 20a GG. Its aim is a constitution-guided review of ongoing earth movements and of the Rhine water transport pipeline.

On 30 October 2025 the first extension (Garzweiler / toxic-waste scandal / EU precaution) followed, and on 1 November 2025 the second extension (work on a public holiday in the “Sündenwäldchen”).

In a letter of 24 October 2025, the Arnsberg district government responded to the original submission: it emphasises the importance of Art. 20a GG and points out that climate-protection law and the Federal Constitutional Court’s case law had been taken into account in approving the main operating plan for Hambach. At the same time, it upholds the existing permit.

On 10 November 2025, the NRW environment ministry forwarded the second extension for reasons of competence to the city of Kerpen (CC: Sabina Rothe, Helmut Scheel) – a visible step of institutional feedback at the municipal level.

Status: resonance phase II formally completed (response to main submission received), extensions remain the review benchmark of the ongoing phase III.

📄 Main submission Hambach – DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17465271
📄 First extension – DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17569246
📄 Second extension – DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17569788

Resonance NRW – Garzweiler buy-back and soft law

The 2022 agreement between RWE, the federal government and the state of NRW promises to make no longer needed land and houses in the mining villages available “on appropriate terms” for development and revitalisation – with “special relevance” of re-purchase for former owners. On this basis, the former resettlement villages are now marketed as “future villages by the lake”.

In practice, however, we see the typical dynamics of soft law: the wording creates expectations but no enforceable rights. Rights of first refusal exist formally, but the prices demanded deter many former residents from returning. A large part of the houses is marketed via the open property market; social and ecological follow-up costs remain in the background.

Tension between promises and implementation

• Politically, the narrative focuses on home, revitalisation and “future villages”, while legally it remains unclear what exactly “appropriate terms” mean and who can enforce them.
• The clause that the mining company should not incur any “additional effort” in effect limits the scope for socially fair solutions.
• Long-term effects on water balance, aquatic ecology and eternal burdens are hardly discussed publicly, although they are central in the light of Art. 20a GG and Art. 191(2) TFEU.

Connection to Systemic Legal Development

For Systemic Legal Development, this agreement serves as a resonance foil: it shows how far political imagery (return, revitalisation, future villages) and legal enforceability can diverge. While the framework paper relies on voluntary talks and soft commitments, the systemic submissions in NRW aim to remind the administration of binding duties of review and documentation under Art. 20a GG, the Water Framework Directive and the precautionary principle of EU law.

This creates a double image: soft-law promises in the political sphere and preventive legal application in administrative practice. Both levels are part of the same story but only become comprehensible when viewed together.

Between tree empathy and land-use logic – the functional perspective

Public debate often swings between tree empathy and the land-use logic of the energy transition: on the one hand, every felled tree is mourned; on the other hand, commercial forests and “calamity areas” are routinely treated as reserve land for wind energy or compensation. What is almost always missing is a constitution-guided functional perspective: what does this mean for water balance, species composition and the long-term carrying capacity of the co-world?

This is precisely where Systemic Legal Development comes in. It does not pit a single tree against a wind turbine, but turns Art. 20a GG, the Water Framework Directive and the precautionary principle into binding benchmarks for review. The question is not: “Wind power – yes or no?”, but: Under what conditions does the ecological functional system remain intact – and how does the state document this responsibility?

Ruhr – objection to mine-water discharge

Building on the systemic submission on Hambach, an objection by a citizen from the Ruhr region was lodged in the procedure for amending water permits for central mine-water management in the Ruhr area. It transfers the logic of Art. 20a GG, Art. 191(2) TFEU and the Water Framework Directive (WFD) to the eternal burdens of mine-water management.

Key themes of the objection

• Climate risk and annual maximum volumes: criticism that extreme years (heavy rainfall 2023/24) are made the new reference point for permanently higher discharge volumes without developing a real precautionary strategy.
• WFD and non-deterioration: demand for strict review of whether increased volumes and loads are compatible with the WFD’s objectives.
• Drinking water and long-term pathways: reference to the Ruhr’s role as a source of drinking water and the need to factor long-term risks and treatment efforts into the decision.
• Monitoring and adjustment: proposal for tight monitoring networks, binding thresholds and a time-limited permit with a duty to re-examine alternatives.

Current status – response by the authority

The district government has confirmed by phone that the objection was received in due time. A separate written confirmation of receipt is not envisaged; the objection will be taken into account in the procedure. The authority has indicated that the objector will be informed and involved in the event of a conciliation or hearing meeting.

The objection thus becomes part of the official subject of review: the questions on climate risk, WFD, drinking water and monitoring must be answered in the further course of the procedure and documented in the decision.

Murnauer Moos / upper Loisach – functional case

With the submission on the Murnauer Moos / upper course of the Loisach, the focus shifts from post-mining recultivation towards the preventive safeguarding of a living system. At its centre is not one particular protected area, but the functionality of an entire catchment: moorlands, wetlands, river course and their role for floods, low flows, cooling, biodiversity and CO₂ storage.

The submission asks whether the state is fulfilling its duty under Art. 20a GG when drainage, construction and cumulative interventions in the upper catchment gradually destroy exactly those buffers on which the stability of the Loisach depends. Unlike the fossil legacy in the Rhenish mining area, this concerns a system that still holds – but clearly shows where the line to ecological catastrophe lies.

Systemic classification: Murnau / upper Loisach is the prototype of a functional case: the submission demonstrates how functional protection can be applied in practice – not abstractly, but along the lines of water balance, moor body, river dynamics and their significance for communities in the Loisach valley.

➜ Dossier Murnauer Moos / upper Loisach

Recultivation ≠ duty of precaution

WDR 5 portrays the Rhenish mining area as future eco-corridors. The submissions show: recultivation does not replace precaution. Art. 20a GG requires the preventive safeguarding of the foundations of life – not only their subsequent design.