It was termed "Basic Law" (Grundgesetz, pronounced [ˈɡʁʊntɡəˌzɛts] ⓘ) to indicate that it was a provisional piece of legislation pending the reunification of Germany.

Nevertheless, although the amended Basic Law was approved by all four Allied Powers in 1990 (who thereby relinquished their reserved constitutional rights), it was never submitted to a popular vote, neither in 1949 nor in 1990.

The 1949 Basic Law was explicitly irredentist, maintaining that there remained separated parts of 'Germany as a whole' in the form of German peoples living outside the territory under the control of the Federal Republic of 1949, with whom the Federal Republic was constitutionally bound to pursue reunification, and in respect of whom mechanisms were provided by which such other parts of Germany might subsequently declare their accession to the Basic Law.

Since initially the Basic Law did not apply for all of Germany, its legal provisions were only valid in its field of application (Geltungsbereich des Grundgesetzes für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland).

It remained unclear whether accession under Article 23 could be achieved by a part of Germany whose government was not recognised de jure by the Federal Republic, and if so how; but in practice this situation did not arise.

For the time being, this Basic Law shall apply in the territory of the Länder of Baden, Bavaria, Bremen, Greater Berlin,[note 1] Hamburg, Hesse, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, Schleswig-Holstein, Württemberg-Baden, and Württemberg-Hohenzollern.

The towns of Elten, Selfkant, and Suderwick, which had been occupied and annexed by Netherlands in 1949, were reunited with the Federal Republic in 1963 by means of an international treaty without invoking Article 23.

The Basic Law, in its original form, maintained the continuing existence of a larger Germany and German people, only parts of whom were currently organised within the Federal Republic.

Nevertheless, the full extent of the implied wider German nation is nowhere defined in the Basic Law, although it was always clearly understood that the peoples of both East Germany and Berlin would be included.

The time of legal nonentity ended, as the new West German state, the Federal Republic of Germany, came into being, although still under Western occupation.

The constitutional position of the federal government was strengthened, as the Bundespräsident has only a small fraction of the former power of the Reichspräsident, and in particular, is no longer in Supreme Command of the armed forces.

The new procedure was intended to provide more stability than under the Weimar Constitution, when extremists on the left and right would vote to remove a chancellor, without agreeing on a new one, creating a leadership vacuum.

[16] Nevertheless, although the Weimar Republic was now wholly irretrievable, avoiding its perceived constitutional weaknesses represented the predominant concern for the framers of the Basic Law.

The intention of the framers of the Basic Law was that this court would range widely against any tendency to slip back toward non-democratic ways: "a strict but benevolent guardian of an immature democracy that cannot quite trust itself".

[19] As such the Federal Constitutional Court had the power to ban political parties whose objectives or actions threatened the 'free democratic basic order".

[20] Notwithstanding this, there was a striking disjunction between the social context of two-parent, family households assumed in the Basic Law, and the everyday reality of German society in 1949, where over half of adult women were unmarried, separated or widowed, where the effective working population was overwhelmingly female, and where millions of expellees, refugees and displaced families were still without permanent accommodation.

The Basic Law potentially provided two routes for the establishment of a reborn and unified German state: either under Article 23 whereby 'other parts of Germany' over and above the named States of the Federal Republic (Bundesländer) could subsequently declare their accession, or under Article 146 where constituent power (pouvoir constituant) could be exercised by elected representatives of the entirety of the German people in creating a new permanent constitution that would replace the Basic Law.

They argued furthermore that international conventions constraining occupying powers in wartime from enforcing fundamental changes of governmental system, economic system or social institutions within the territory under their control—the Hague Regulations of Land Warfare and the Geneva Conventions—did not apply, and could not apply, as the termination of Nazi Germany and the total Denazification of German institutions and legal structures had been agreed by the Allies as absolute moral imperatives.

The Basic Law established Germany as a parliamentary democracy with separation of powers into executive, legislative, and judicial branches.

A clear separation of powers was considered imperative to prevent measures like an over-reaching Enabling act, as happened in Germany in 1933.

Thus, the Federal German Constitutional Court had to decide whether there existed a violation of an inadmissibility of retroactive punishment in the criminal statute.

[33] The prohibition of retroactive punishment in Article 103 has been likened to double jeopardy in common law systems, such as the U.S.[34] Article 104 mandates that deprivation of personal liberty must be provided for by statute and authorised by a judge before the end of the day following the arrest (analogous to the common law concept of Habeas corpus), and that a relative or a person in the confidence of the prisoner must be notified of a judicial decision imposing detention.

In 1982, CDU Chancellor Helmut Kohl had been installed through a constructive vote of no confidence after the FDP dissolved its coalition with the SPD to work with the CDU/CSU instead.

It decided Kohl could believe this since the FDP was not only deeply divided by the change of coalition, but had already agreed to early elections, meaning in theory it no longer had to support the government.

Also in the 1949 Basic Law, Article 24 empowered the federal government to join international systems for mutual collective security; but made no specific provision for West German rearmament.

The Basic Law also institutes the parliamentary post of the Wehrbeauftragter (defense commissioner), reporting once a year to parliament, not to the executive.

Although this is not explicitly spelled out in the Basic Law, a number of Constitutional Court cases in the 1990s established that the military may not be deployed by the government outside of NATO territory without a specific resolution of parliament, which describes the details of the mission and limits its term.

During reunification, the two states discussed the possibility of drafting a new common constitution followed by a plebiscite, as envisioned in Article 146, but this path was ultimately not taken.

[39][40] The question of "using" Article 146 to draw a new constitution, and hold a referendum, was left to the twelfth (and first all-German) Bundestag, which after consideration decided against a new draft.

Another controversy was spawned by the limitation of the right to the invulnerability of the private domain (Unverletzlichkeit der Wohnung) by means of acoustic observation (Großer Lauschangriff).