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:
“The world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature, and you know not yet how a globule of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers the whole of Reason; it is for you to know all, it is for you to dare all.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The law is equal before all of us; but we are not all equal before the law. Virtually there is one law for the rich and another for the poor, one law for the cunning and another for the simple, one law for the forceful and another for the feeble, one law for the ignorant and another for the learned, one law for the brave and another for the timid, and within family limits one law for the parent and no law at all for the child.”
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“The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counterauthority to the law.”
—Denis Diderot (1713–1784)