Law of Germany - History

History

German law has been subject to many influences over the centuries. Until Medieval times the Early Germanic Law, derived from the Salic Law of the Salian Franks and other tribes, was common. With the arrival of the Renaissance, Roman law again began to play a strong role, and later on legal scholars known as the Pandectists revived the formalities of Roman law as set by Justinian in the Corpus iuris civilis. It became common law (Gemeines Recht) in large parts of the German-speaking world and prevailed far into the 19th century. As the Holy Roman Empire was composed of countless little territorial entities, the laws varied very much, according to local traditions and religions. These laws were codified in about local 3000 Weistümer (also called Holtinge or Dingrodel), collections of rural laws. Only in relation to the Imperial superior Court of Justice, the Reichskammergericht, there existed codes of procedure. In addition to these the Corpus Iuris Canonici, the source of the better organized ecclesiastical judicature and the old Corpus Iuris Civilis. Both bodies of law were central part of the education of jurists and therefore generally known among them. So these regulations were used in local procedures as well.

Prussia made an effort to bring in an all-new set of laws with the Allgemeines Landrecht für die preußischen Staaten (General National Law for the Prussian States) a system of codification, containing laws in relation to the whole spectrum of legal divisions, in the 18th century which, had a great influence on later works.

After the French July Revolution of 1830, revolutionary ideas of the French Revolution and Napoleon's laws as the Code Civil the Code Pénale and the Code d´ Instruction Criminelle strongly influenced the German legal tradition, especially in the Grand Duchy of Baden, which sometimes only translated codifications of France for its own use.

With the forming of the Deutsches Reich in 1871, a major process of legal standardization ensued, beginning with criminal law and procedural law and culminating in the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (Book of Civil Law) after over twenty years of creative process. Important parts of German legislation still contain regulations of these laws. However, the various states always maintained their own laws to an extent, and still do so in modern federal Germany.

In 1919 in Weimar the Weimarer Verfassung (Weimar Constitution) was created: the first democratic constitution of Germany. This was a very liberal and democratic constitution, but it did not include any basic ethical or political principles. It allowed unlimited changes, the only requirement of any legal decision was a formally correct decision of the appropriate legal institution.

This ultimate democratic legal constitution allowed Hitler to change the whole form of government according to his wishes. The main crimes of National Socialism were in form absolutely legal, because the Nazi-dominated Reichstag made the necessary decisions.

After the war, the two newly emerged German states adopted two different legal systems. The socialist–communist East Germany tried to install new laws strongly influenced by communist and socialist ideology.

The democratic state of West Germany built on existing law. Most of the legal changes of the National socialism were reversed, especially those with ethical criminal content. A new feature was the treatment of the constitution. This constitution was intended to avoid the mistakes of the Weimar Constitution. With the reunification of the two states, West German law was set in force for the most part. A fairly recent development is the influence of European law which aims to harmonize laws in the various states of the European Union, so that many legal developments are taken out of the hand of the federal government and are decided in Brussels instead, where Germany has its own influence on the process along with the other members. German law is still strongly influenced by federalism, and the individual states (Länder) each have their own responsibilities and particular laws, which can be seen as inefficient, but allows for regional variation and promotes meaningful regional democratic responsibility. German legal tradition has in turn influenced many other countries. Just to name a few, the legal systems of Japan, the Republic of Korea, United States of America and the People's Republic of China are to some extent based on German law.