Strafprozessordnung (Heidelberger Kommentar) (German Edition)

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It will become clear that, while there is a wide variety of sources available, materials have not always been published in a consistent manner. Hence, researchers will find it difficult at times to locate certain items, notably when it comes to court decisions or administrative regulations. Not included here are business information sources such as commercial and company registers etc which supplement research in business and commercial law.

Since the s the number of legal resources accessible electronically or online has grown considerably. This includes both commercial, fee-based services as well as sites that are available for free. Special mention should be made of legal resources offered on government websites and on the homepages of major legal publishers. A number of materials are made available through collaborative efforts by the government and database providers, or between several publishers. Many sources are offered under license by more than one provider.

The growing market with a wide range of products that partly overlap, and shifting provider collaborations sometimes make it hard for the legal researcher to keep track. It needs to be said, however, that with Juris, Beck-online, LexisNexis and Legios there are four strong contenders in the market who bundle a multitude of sources pivotal in conducting legal research. At the same time, in spite of the tremendous growth in the electronic product area, legal print literature upholds its importance. The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany, which is known as the Basic Law Grundgesetz lies at the foundation of all other legislation.

The highest legislative bodies are the Bundestag and the Bundesrat as the two chambers of parliament. The Federal Constitutional Court is the highest body of the judiciary, and the Federal President and Federal Government are the highest bodies of the state executive.

This structure is mirrored at the level of the states with state parliaments, the state constitutional courts, and state governors and governments. German law is governed by the federal nature of the Federal Republic of Germany and is thus not dissimilar to legal systems such as the ones in the United States or Australia. However, in contrast to these jurisdictions, the federal principle is not confined to national borders, i. There are basic treaties, regulations and directives. Bilateral and multilateral agreements between EU member states are now mostly replaced by EU treaties.

Germany is a civil law jurisdiction. The law is divided into three major areas: The sources of the law in Germany comprise statutory law as the central and primary source which includes the constitution, statutes and ordinances, regulations, decrees and charters. Court decisions are another source. However, in contrast to jurisdictions such as the UK or the US they do not have a precedent function in that courts are not bound to follow the decisions of higher courts in a previous case.

Courts are bound by the law rather than by precedents. Custom is generally recognized to be yet another source of the law as are interpretations of the law. The German legal tradition and culture go back to the law of the Roman Empire, which made a strong impact on its emergence and development. German law is codified law. The idea of codification dates back to the period of European Enlightenment during the 17th and 18th centuries and, propelled by the aspirations for unification during the 19th century, resulted in the creation of law codes for the major areas of the law.

There has always been strong mutual influence and exchange, which is now culminating in the rapprochement of legal systems as mentioned above. Another strong impetus emanated from the adoption in of the Code Napoleon. By the time of the establishment of the German Reich in there were only two states, Prussia and Saxony, which had codified their private law.

The other German territories were governed by different types of law from ius commune to Austrian and Danish law. With the beginning of industrialization and the need for open markets the unification of the law became an important issue. A draft of a general German commercial code had been adopted by most of the states in the Deutscher Bund German Union by Once the German Reich had been founded, the development of a uniform law code for the whole of Germany took on added importance. In the years following the founding of the German Reich a number of laws were adopted in that set the scene for a common civil code: The Gerichtsverfassungsgesetz court statutes , Konkursordnung insolvency code , Zivilprozessordnung code of civil procedure , and the Strafprozessordnung code of criminal procedure , which have, with some amendments, retained their validity to date.

With a procedural framework in place, work on a uniform civil code was begun, which was to take 26 years from the initial drafting until it took force on January 1, The Commercial Code Handelsgesetzbuch came into force on the same date.

The result of fine 19th century scholarship, it is written in a highly technical language and thus not easily accessible. It has been lauded for its doctrinal refinement and conceptual abstraction that leaves room for interpretation, but is not addressed to the lay person. A century after its adoption its stipulations are still largely the same, the most significant amendments having been made to the book on family law, which has seen major change , 2 and the book on the law of obligations, major parts of which have been revised by the reform of the law of obligations.

The German Civil Code has also served as a model for other countries in developing their civil law codifications. Among them are Japan and Greece. Nazi rule during the period from through has left deep imprints on the development of the law in Germany after World War II. Legislative thinking has been guided by the idea of preventing any such catastrophe from ever happening again. Another important aspect to be considered is the reunification on October 3, of the Federal Republic of Germany and the former German Democratic Republic.

The legal systems had completely grown apart during the years of division. During the years since a legal system modeled on the one in the old Federal Republic has been set up in the eastern part of Germany as well. Under the Unification Treaty, certain parts of East German law have continued to retain their validity. Additional laws and regulations had to be enacted in various different fields of law to cover the specific situation that had arisen out of the joining of two completely different systems.

Introduction to Foreign Legal Systems. Introduction to German Law. Oxford University Press, C H Beck, An Introduction to German Law. The federal legislative process may involve any of the following bodies: The Bundestag German parliament as the elected representative body of the people, the Bundesrat as the representative body of the states , the federal government and the parliamentary committees. Legislative initiative may emanate from the government, members of Parliament a parliamentary group, party or other group or the Bundesrat. There is legislation that requires approval from the Bundesrat , e.

Once a bill has been passed, it is countersigned by the government minister in charge and the Federal Chancellor, executed by the Federal President and promulgated in the Bundesgesetzblatt Federal Law Gazette. Unless otherwise stipulated, it will enter into force on the 14th day after publication in the Federal Law Gazette.

Ordinances are passed by the Executive, i. Bundesrat approval is required if they affect the interests of the states. The legislative procedure on the federal level is explained in detail on the Web site of the German Bundestag. Documents that are produced and published as part of the legislative process do not only comprise the texts of prospective new laws or statutory amendments. They also include the reasoning of the bodies initiating such legislation, which may be used as a source for construing the future law. Important preliminary draft bills used to be accessible to a wider interested public only in print and by placing a request with the respective government ministry.

Major legislative projects were published in journals. Now they have begun to be published on the home pages of the government ministries in charge of the legislative project or can be accessed through the link to legislative projects Gesetzesvorhaben und Neuregelungen on the home page of the German Federal Government. The official legislative process is triggered by a bill being submitted by either the Bundesrat, the Federal Government or a parliamentary group within the Bundestag.

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The full text of draft bills, complete with reasoning, and amendments proposed by the parliamentary committees is published in Bundestags-Drucksachen or Bundesrats-Drucksachen Printed Matters of the Bundestag and Bundesrat , a serial publication of the Bundestag and Bundesrat, respectively.

The debates of bills in the Bundestag and Bundesrat are recorded in the minutes of plenary sessions Stenographische Berichte des Deutschen Bundestages and Stenographische Berichte des Deutschen Bundesrates , also called Plenarprotokolle. It has appeared as a bound set at the end of each parliamentary term since It provides free online access to legislative materials, including the full text of draft bills as published in the Bundestags-Drucksachen , and all other documents of the legislative history , with full texts of parliamentary printed matter, and links to the full text of Part I of the Bundesgesetzblatt Federal Law Gazette starting from DIP also provides information on initiatives that require approval by the Bundesrat or, if applicable, on EU Directives that need to be implemented by a particular law, as well as the minutes of plenary sessions, activities of members of the Bundestag and Bundesrat, and information on parliamentary activities starting from the 8th parliamentary term i.

It should be noted that the content of DIP is accessed through two separate gateways with different search interfaces: Alternatively, there is the Parlamentsspiegel parliamentary database, an initiative launched by the 16 German state parliaments, which covers the federal materials published in the Bundestags- and Bundesrats-Drucksachen for approximately the same period as DIP, as well as the legislative materials of the states see below at 2. Minutes of plenary sessions of the Bundesrat are available from as early as the 1st parliamentary term.

DIP provides access to some of the full text data from Parlamentsspiegel by linking to that information.

A list of the federal data it covers can be found here. Parlamentsspiegel is the source to use for federal law research before Research after that date should be conducted in DIP. Inquiries regarding federal legislative materials not published in DIP or Parlamentsspiegel up to the 7th parliamentary term in can be directed to Sach-und Sprechregister des Deutschen Bundestages , the official documentation center of the German Parliament phone no.

In juris, a partially government-owned legal database provider, in association with Bundesanzeiger publishers launched a fee-based Legislation Portal Gesetzesportal. It provides in-depth coverage of the legislative process starting from the 15 th parliamentary term. Some states make legislative materials available on their internet homepages as well. Despite some major progress, a number of federal states still do not put these materials online, The ones available vary in content, scope and ease of searching.

Given this situation, all the more importance attaches to the Parlamentsspiegel , which makes it its goal to build an integrated parliamentary information system. The Internet version was launched in The printed matters of the federal states currently available are listed here. Two of the 16 states Baden-Wurttemberg and Hesse dropped out of the project in early , which meant a substantial setback to the importance of this database as a comprehensive tool.

An overview of internet homepages of the different federal states and the state materials accessible there can be found on the Parlamentsspiegel website. Select Literature and Databases: When it comes to legal issues that need to be regulated uniformly for all states, exclusive legislative power rests with the Federation. This includes foreign affairs, defence, transportation, the legal protection of industrial property rights, copyright, post and telecommunications, etc.

Concurrent legislation applies to fields of law which, although uniform regulation for the federation is required, allow for state legislation as well. State legislation is repealed, however, if a federal law exists or is enacted in the same respect e. Federal laws may be supplemented by state laws when additional legal issues need to be covered and require augmentation by state law.

This applies to higher education, the protection of nature and soil, the water balance, and urban planning. Laws at federal and state levels are adopted through the official legislative process described above. The body of statutory materials also comprises ordinances Rechtsverordnungen issued by the Executive the federal or state governments on the basis of an enacted law, and municipal orders and ordinances adopted by the local authorities. Further, there are administrative rules and regulations issued by the Executive, which serve to interpret the law.

As for the latter, we will consider here generally applicable administrative regulations by federal or state authorities that require publication. New federal laws and major ordinances and amendments thereof have appeared in Part I since Issues of the print version are published, as required, approximately 50 times per year. Part II publishes the international agreements concluded by the Federal Republic of Germany, and national laws and orders adopted for their validation and enforcement also see 3.

The text is usually provided in German and in the official languages of the agreement. Because of the complicated legal situation that had arisen after World War II with laws from the German Reich still in force, and new laws and decrees enacted by the Allied Powers and, later, the German parliament, the German legislators decided to review German laws and repeal obsolete statutes. This compilation is still useful today in researching older versions of the law.

The Federal Law Gazette is available online in German through the following services: Valid federal law is officially indexed in Fundstellennachweis A FNA , an indispensable tool in accessing the statutory materials of Bundesgesetzblatt I. It features a subject, keyword and abbreviations index and an index of valid laws of the former German Democratic Republic and related federal laws, with a separate keyword index.

Fundstellennachweis A is published by the Federal Ministry of Justice at the beginning of each year, with a mid-year supplement. For any classical federal law research using print sources Fundstellennachweis A will be the first "port of call. Alternatively, the Bundesgesetzblatt Gesamtregister Comprehensive Index to the Federal Law Gazette covering Parts I and II from - indexes the valid law and, in addition, laws and ordinances that have gone out of force.

It was published in cooperation with C. By contrast, when laws are amended, the Fundstellennachweis indexes sources of the old versions for the last time in the year of amendment. While publishing amendments, Bundesgesetzblatt I does not usually provide consolidated or revised versions of laws. The complete text of the new law as amended is only published in the event of landmark changes e. For this reason, Bundesgesetzblatt I is not a convenient tool for practical law research if a law has been amended multiple times. Consolidated versions of the law for a selection see below are offered in a wide range of publications from various German legal publishers, who publish the German federal laws complete or by subject area.

Many of these are also available electronically, on CD-ROM or online, as a free or fee-based service. Like Bundesgesetzblatt, it appears in two parts: Part I includes federal tax laws as well as federal ordinances and administrative rules and regulations. The official publication for most laws and ordinances prior to were the Reichsgesetzblatt and Reichsanzeiger , the predecessors to Bundesgesetzblatt and Bundesanzeiger.

As some former East German laws are still valid, this source may be of some relevance as well. Commercial online publishers of German statutes beyond the ones mentioned above include the following: The foremost commercial database of German federal law is Juris also see below at 8. First established in the early s one of its goals has been to document the development of the law over time. It covers federal and state laws, rules and regulations, EU law, case law, journal articles, press announcements on high court decisions, industrial bargaining agreements, and technology law.

Federal laws are covered in full text, however, starting from different points in time. All versions of a law since that time are available in full text, including the texts of laws from the Reichsgesetzblatt and other official statutory publications prior to the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany that are still in force.

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It perceives its mission as offering consolidated versions of laws including historical versions, to the extent they have been documented. In this respect, juris is currently the first, and in terms of its scope, single choice. It holds valid federal laws based on Fundstellennachweis A as well as previous versions of federal laws and ordinances, including the laws and regulations of the former German Democratic Republic still in force.

Access to the consolidated federal statutes including their historical versions, the Bundestag Drucksachen printed matters and the Bundesgesetzblatt, both beginning from the 15 th parliamentary term, is also provided through the fee-based legislation portal Gesetzesportal launched by juris in association with Bundesanzeiger publishers in Beck-online , the fee-based legal database service of C.

Das Deutsche Bundesrecht by Nomos publishers is another commercial product accessible via the Internet 20 updates per year; annual subscription or chip account; also available as a looseleaf service with monthly updates, and on CD-ROM with four updates per year. It offers complete coverage of current federal laws including laws of the former East Germany still in force , based on Bundesgesetzblatt I , as well as select ordinances. It is also offered through beck-online cf.

LexisNexis Recht , relatively new to Germany as a legal database provider, has established itself in the German legal information market among others by acquiring MBO publishers and obtaining licenses from other German publishers. Its legislation database, based on MBO content, covers about 8, federal rules of law, a wide selection of EU laws, and, almost completely, the laws of the 16 federal states. Further providers of statutes databases include. The German Federal Government and juris in a joint project named Gesetze im Internet Statutes on the Internet have undertaken to put online major laws which fall within the sphere of competence of the Federal Government Ministries.

They are offered as unofficial versions and can be accessed by subject, alphabetically and by ministry the latter with a free-text search option. These materials are updated monthly. For international treaties and agreements concluded by the Federal Republic of Germany to take effect nationally, a federal law needs to be enacted. The legislative process is recorded in the DIP and Parlamentsspiegel databases mentioned above at 2.

II , which publishes both the international treaty or agreement concluded and the related federal law available from the Web as a fee-based serviced at this site. Parlamentsspiegel and Das Deutsche Bundesrecht publish a selection.

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It also provides an index of other signatory states. Other access tools include the Bundesgesetzblatt Gesamtregister Comprehensive Index to the Federal Law Gazette as well as a number of commercial looseleaf publications. The laws of the European Union increasingly influence the national laws of all its member states. This applies to the Federal Republic of Germany as well, which was among the founding members in National laws in EU countries often implement EU directives, and it is therefore necessary to check for applicable EU law. EU regulations apply directly. Without going into the details of EU law research, the major sources from a German perspective shall be mentioned here.

Series C of the Official Journal publishes promulgations and drafts of directives and regulations as well as Commission documents. Some of the major directives and regulations can be found in Parlamentsspiegel. However, documentation of EU law was discontinued in A number of commercial services are available as well.

All German states publish their enacted state laws and ordinances in state law gazettes and gazettes of ordinances the old states starting from and the new states of the former East Germany from The publishing authority may vary from one state to another and can be the state parliament, the ministry of the interior or ministry of justice, or others. In addition, most of the states publish administrative gazettes with administrative rules and ordinances.

Some states such as Bavaria, which existed before World War II, published law gazettes as early as then. The laws of such states were revised after the war as necessary. Commercial publishers put out consolidated compilations of state laws in looseleaf format.

One of the major names to be mentioned here is C. Official Gazettes of the Laws and Subordinate Legislation of the states in print format: Major tools for accessing both federal and state legislation include the following: It publishes the full-text of nearly all federal laws and major state laws and ordinances and references the complete tables of contents of the state law gazettes, of Bundesgesetzblatt I and II, and the Bundesanzeiger. Complete records are currently available for North-Rhine Westphalia only. An overview of the state law gazettes included in Parlamentsspiegel can be found here.

Most federal states provide online access to their state law gazettes in one way or another, some for free and some fee-based. Besides federal laws, current versions of laws and ordinances of some or all states are accessible through juris 14 states , beck-online all states , and LexisNexis Recht all states. Universally binding administrative rules and regulations are published in Bundesanzeiger , and in Gemeinsames Ministerialblatt Joint Gazette of the Government Ministries , a publication of the Federal Ministry of the Interior.

The latter has published since the federal administrative rules and regulations of various federal ministries. This will tremendously facilitate legal research in this field, all the more so because they are to be cross-referenced with statutory laws and major court decisions. As of recently, the German government in association with juris have set up an internet portal for federal administrative rules and regulations Verwaltungsvorschriften im Internet giving the general public free access to current administrative rules and regulations issued by various federal government ministries.

Finding federal administrative rules and regulations outside of the juris databases can be very tedious. One may have to fall back on statutory compilations and commentaries, which frequently provide footnote references to the relevant administrative rules. The administrative rules and regulations of the states are published in print form in official gazettes of different types.

However, as with federal rules and regulations, completeness is a issue. Beck-online has started to give increasing coverage to federal and state administrative rules and regulations, among others by offering its standard title Praxis der Kommunalverwaltung as a fee-based online service. A number of states have put some of the relevant materials on the Internet.

In January these included: VORIS — free state law service in cooperation with juris including administrative rules and regulations. REVOSax free state law service including administrative rules and regulations. As with federal rules and regulations, the legal researcher will frequently have to fall back on statutory compilations and commentaries to find references to such rules and regulations. Contacting the respective state ministries of justice may also prove helpful.

Bundesanzeiger Verlag, continued as separate indexes A and B from , cf. Bundesanzeiger Verlag, print; online with subscription. Carl Heymanns, -. Official Publications of State Laws and Regulations: Major Publications of Consolidated Federal Laws: Nomos volume looseleaf service with monthly updates also online as a fee-based service at www.

Verfassungs- und Verwaltungsgesetze der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Beck [Sartorius I] looseleaf service, updates per year online via beck-online. Beck looseleaf service, updates per year electronic version via beck-online. Beck looseleaf service, updates per year. Beck looseleaf service, 2 updates per year both offered in beck-online. Beck looseleaf service, about 2 updates per year electronic version via beck-online. Beck [Sartorius II] looseleaf service with about 2 updates per year. Borries, Reimer von ed. Groeben, Hans von der ed.

Nomos volume looseleaf service with monthly updates. Databases of Federal Laws: Free service to the public provided by the Federal Ministry of Justice in cooperation with juris; features the current consolidated versions of nearly all federal laws. Makrolog offers a number of options for subscriptions including a direct purchase option by credit card for individual documents.

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The fee-based service by the same provider contains all issues of the Federal Law Gazette, Parts I and II, since the launch of the print versions in and , respectively. Fee-based legal database service with premium coverage of consolidated federal statutes including historical versions. Federal Law Portal Gesetzesportal. Fee-based legal database service including approx. Fee-based legal database; features laws including federal ones. Fee-based service by Nomos publishers. Industrial property law database operated by attorney Dr. Jochen Krieger with full texts of pertinent laws and supplementary literature; free service.

The fundamental legal provisions underlying court practice and adjudication in the Federal Republic of Germany can be found in Articles 92 and 93 of the Basic Law. The structure of the court system follows the federal principle with courts at the federal and at state levels. The Federal Constitutional Court holds a special position and, as an organ of the constitution, is the highest German court and an independent court of the Federal Republic.

It rules exclusively on constitutional issues. The Federal Constitutional Court is complemented by constitutional courts in the federal states. Besides the constitutional courts, there are the following major categories of jurisdiction: There is ordinary jurisdiction which falls into civil and criminal jurisdiction with local, regional and higher regional courts Amtsgerichte, Landgerichte, Oberlandesgerichte at the state level, and, at federal leve, the Bundesgerichtshof Federal Court of Justice - BGH as the highest court.

Furthermore, there is administrative, fiscal, labor and social jurisdiction with courts at regional, higher regional, and federal levels. The regional and higher regional courts are, at the same time, courts of appeal of their respective states. There is a Joint Panel of the Highest Federal Courts which acts as a supreme body of jurisdiction across all court levels and jurisdictions and decides on issues of divergent adjudication by other courts.

Its authority is, however, largely restricted and cannot be compared to that of a Federal Supreme Court in other countries as, for example, in the United States. Courts are divided into panels and divisions based on areas of law. German courts of all levels pass a total of about 4. Each case is assigned a case number that reflects the type of court, level of appeal, and subdivision.

The case number and date are of great importance in citing and finding cases. When a court decision is published, it is preceded by a summary, comparable to headnotes, authored by judges, press departments with the courts, or the editorial board of the publishing journal. As a rule, the names of the parties involved are not mentioned. Court decisions by the highest courts are most completely recorded in print format in various quasi- official reporters put together by the judges of the respective courts.

They are published in the large legal publishing houses, however, with much delay. Legal journals are usually much faster in publishing court decisions. Some of them have specialized almost entirely in the publication of cases, and publish decisions of regional and higher regional courts as well e. Aside from quasi-official compilations, there are various commercial publications of court decisions, at both federal and state levels, most of them in looseleaf format, but also on CD-ROM, and focused on specific fields of law.

Two of the major ones are listed below. Commercial publishers have set up databases of court decisions to be made accessible via the World Wide Web, either based on existing print versions or by cooperating with other providers. This market has undergone fundamental changes since the late s and is still in flux.

It currently holds over , decisions, about one third of which in full text. It covers almost completely the decisions of the highest federal courts of the past 20 or so years; older decisions are gradually being included. Juris case records are prepared at the federal courts. In addition, these departments evaluate journals and compilations of court decisions.

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