Law
Germany's legal system is a civilian system whose highest source of law is the 1949 German Constitution, which sets up the modern judiciary, but the law adjudicated in court comes from the German Codes; thus, German law is primarily codal in nature. The court system adjudicates (1) public law (öffentliches Recht), that is, administrative law (civil-government litigation or litigation between two government bodies) and criminal law, and (2) private law (Privatrecht). German law is mainly based on early Byzantine law, specifically Justinian's Code, and to a much lesser extent the Napoleonic Code.
German law is not impregnated with legal positivism to the extent of Napoleonic legal systems, so Germany's judiciary is not subordinated to the legislature, and decisional law has greater importance, though not to the extent of common law systems. The court system is inquisitorial, thus judicial officers personally enter proof and testimony into evidence, with the litigants and their counsel merely assisting, although in some courts evidence can only be tendered by litigants.
Read more about this topic: Judiciary Of Germany
Famous quotes containing the word law:
“I do not believe in lawyers, in that mode of attacking or defending a man, because you descend to meet the judge on his own ground, and, in cases of the highest importance, it is of no consequence whether a man breaks a human law or not. Let lawyers decide trivial cases.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Concord’s little arch does not span all our fate, nor is what transpires under it law for the universe.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“War is thus divine in itself, since it is a law of the world. War is divine through its consequences of a supernatural nature which are as much general as particular.... War is divine in the mysterious glory that surrounds it and in the no less inexplicable attraction that draws us to it.... War is divine by the manner in which it breaks out.”
—Joseph De Maistre (1753–1821)