Ely’s representation-reinforcing theory of judicial review is little known in German public law. Where it is mentioned, it is most often to contest its relevance to German debates. Yet both German jurisprudence and scholarship have a long tradition of taking process-related issues seriously independently of Ely. This makes Germany an interesting place not only to examine the reception of Ely’s work but also to analyze how and where Elyian arguments surface and in what forms. In the context of the German Constitutional Court’s robust understanding of its own role and the character of the Basic Law as a set of substantive values or principles, such arguments often do not appear as part of a broader theory of relative trust and distrust, but rather serve standardly to justify judicial intervention. The German experience also speaks to the problem noted by Ely’s US critics of operationalizing the idea of malfunction, which lies at the heart of his argument and ensures not only its survival but its current popularity. It suggests that malfunction is often not something we can define in the abstract, but that Ely’s theory is nevertheless important for confronting us with the question of not only when distrust warrants intervention but also when the evidence for trust does not.

中文翻译：

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对抗故障还是优化民主？德国的比较政治过程理论的教训

伊利的司法审查代表强化理论在德国公法中鲜为人知。在提到它的地方，最常见的是质疑它与德国辩论的相关性。然而，德国的法理学和学术都具有独立于 Ely 认真对待与过程相关的问题的悠久传统。这使得德国成为一个有趣的地方，不仅可以检查 Ely 作品的接受度，还可以分析 Elyian 论点如何以及在何处出现以及以何种形式出现。在德国宪法法院对其自身的角色和基本法作为一套实质性价值或原则的特征的深刻理解的背景下，此类论点通常不会作为更广泛的相对信任和不信任理论的一部分出现，而是标准地为司法干预辩护。德国的经验也说明了伊利的美国批评者指出的问题，即将故障概念付诸实施，这是他论点的核心，不仅确保了故障的存在，而且确保了目前的流行。它表明，故障通常不是我们可以抽象地定义的东西，但 Ely 的理论对于我们面对这样一个问题很重要，即不仅不信任需要干预，而且信任的证据不需要干预。