has the authority to strike down laws. In recent years, an increasing number of tribunals of a judicial nature (article 133 point 4 B-VG) hade been introduced in a number of areas to improve the review of the conduct of administrative authorities. The most important among them were the Länder independent administrative chambers (Unabhängige Verwaltungssenate - UVS), who decided, amongst other things, on second authority in proceedings relating to administrative contraventions as well as recourses against acts of direct exercise of command and constraint power from administrative authorities. Other such chambers were competent in the area of tax law (Unabhängiger Finanzsenat - UFS), in terms of asylum (Unabhängiger Bundesasylsenat - UBAS), in relation to environmental matters (Unabhängiger Umweltsenat) or in the field of telecommunications (Unabhängiger Bundeskommunikationssenat). Although all these tribunals were formally part of the administrative organization, their members had guarantees of independence and irremovability and their powers may thus be compared to jurisdictions. Their rulings could be challenged before the Administrative or the Constitutional Court. In 2014 these administrative tribunals were abolished in favour of eleven administrative courtsone in each state (Landesverwaltungsgerichte) and two on the federal level (Bundesverwaltungsgericht, Bundesfinanzgericht). The Austrian constitution was the second in the world (nearly contemporaneous with Czechoslovakia) to enact judicial review by a Constitutional Court. It had been established in 1919 and gained the right to revise the laws of the federal states that year. After the new constitution had been adopted in 1920, the court was also entitled to revise national laws according to the constitution. This scheme of a separate constitutional court able to review legislative acts for their constitutionality came to be known as the "Austrian system". After the U.S. and the British Dominions (such as Canada and Australia), where the regular court system is in charge of judicial review, Austria was one of the earliest countries to have judicial review at all (although the Czechoslovak Constitution came into force earlier, the establishment of the Court's new rights itself predated the Czechoslovak Court by a couple of months). Many European countries adopted the Austrian system of review after World War II. Judiciary Judicial powers not committed to the Administrative and Constitutional Court System are vested with the Civil and Criminal Court System, a structure consisting of civil courts on the one hand and criminal courts on the other hand. Civil courts try all cases in which both the claimant and