CML 4114JD Comparative Legal Systemslibvolume5.xyz/law/ballb/5thyear/semester9/seminar... ·...

Lehrstuhl für Common Law und Vergleichende Rechtstheorie

Prof. Dr. Thomas Lundmark

CML 4114JD Comparative Legal

Systems

01 – purposes and methods

Zwecke und Methoden der RechtsvergleichungProf. Dr. Thomas Lundmark

books on reserve

• The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Law (Reimann and Zimmermann eds.)

• Bell, Judiciaries within Europe: A Comparative Review

• David and Brierley, Major Legal Systems of the Worlds Today

• Ehrenzweig, Psycholanalytic Jurisprudence

• Glenn, Legal Traditions of the World

• MacCormick and Summers, Interpreting Precedents: A Comparative Study

• Merryman, The Civil Law Tradition

• Zweigert and Kötz, An Introduction to Comparative Law


additional books recommended (in German)

• Constantinesco, Léontin-Jean: Rechtsvergleichung, 3 Bände

• David, René / Jauffret-Spinosi, Camille / Grasmann, Günther: Einführung in die großen Rechtssysteme der Gegenwart

• Großfeld, Bernhard: Kernfragen der Rechtsvergleichung

• Rainer, Michael J.: Europäisches Privatrecht. Die Rechtsvergleichung

• Sacco, Rodolfo: Einführung in die Rechtsvergleichung

• [Zweigert, Konrad / Kötz, Hein: Einführung in die Rechtsvergleichung]


lecture topics and suggested readings

• Mon, 5 Jan: purposes and methods; legal families (main sources Pierre Legrand, "John Merryman and Comparative Legal Studies: A Dialogue," 47 Am. J. Comp. L. 3 (1999); Zweigert and Kötz; Glenn)

• Tues-Wed, 6-7 Jan: lawyers (David and Brierley; Zweigert and Kötz)

• Thurs, 8 Jan: judiciaries (Bell; Merryman, The Civil Law Tradition)

• Fri, Mon, 9 Jan, 12 Jan: lay judges and jurors

• Tues, 13 Jan: parliaments and forms of state (Zweigert and Kötz; Merryman, The Civil Law Tradition)

• Wed-Thurs, 14-15: legislation (Zweigert and Kötz; Merryman, The Civil Law Tradition)

• Fri, Mon (16 Jan, 19 Jan): judicial precedents (MacCormick and Summers, Interpreting Precedents)

• Tues, 20 Jan: legal philosophy (Ehrenzweig)

• Wed, 21 Jan: law and language


evaluation/exam

• a (“major”) paper worth 100%

• 5,000 – 10,000 words, excluding footnotes and bibliography (25-35 pages)


general topics for exam papers

• lawyers– historial developments

– professional role(s)

– future developments

• judiciaries

• lay judges and juries

• parliaments and forms of state

• legislation

• judicial precedents

• legal philosophy

• law and language


John Henry Merryman

dialogue with Pierre Legrand


BS, University of Portland 1943MS Univesity of Notre Dame 1944JD, Notre Dame Law School 1947LLM, NYU 1951JSD NYU 1955

John Henry Merryman


JHM criticizes “rule-based comparative studies”

the value of "rule comparison" as a source of explanation is small rule-based comparative study `has been exclusively rule-centered` because it `has been dominated by European legal theory [and is] merely a logical extension of continental legal science.`


Merryman criticizes the Italian basic reverence for the mastery of legal science, of the tools, the vocabulary of German legal science. ... Italians [are] more German than the Germans.



Take German law. Here is a legal system that, in its operation, is dominated by judges. What may be the most significant part of the German legal education process, the Referendarzeit, is dominated by judges. To argue that the product of judicial work is irrelevant or inappropriate to legal education is again to exhibit a rule-centered way of thinking about law. Traditional comparative law focuses on the BGB, but the vital force in German law comes from the judicial system. Since the Germans established their federal constitutional court, this has become more and more apparent. Everyone pays attention to what the constitutional court does, and the influence of its power trickles down to the lower courts. Judicial decisions are where crucial decisions about German law are made.



Strictly speaking, what passes as comparative law in American casebooks and much American scholarship is most often foreign law in the sense that it is merely descriptive of foreign legal actors, foreign legal institutions, foreign legal processes, and so on. To the extent that there is any comparison, it is there primarily to aid in description. There is really very little of what we could call "real" comparison going on.



JHM advocates non-rule-based research


one purpose of first-year law classes is to teach students to think like [American] lawyers what does this mean? where one finds "the law"what the law iswhat is the purpose of lawhow to use the lawhow to criticize the law



How easy would it be for an American to become a full member of a French or German law faculty?

What European law faculty would invite an American to come there as a full-time professor? It is just not likely to happen.



Anything you can do that is an alternative to the anecdotal, low-level kind of thing that one sees so much of in comparative law is useful. One of these alternatives certainly is the idea of comparing not the legal rules, which are social demands on the legal system, but the underlying reality of the legal system, the institutions, actors, and processes, what I call "the law machine." Treating law as a social sub-system is a way of studying that is likely to be productive and is a direction in which it would be useful for comparative law to go. Another alternative is comparative legal culture. Where do ideas come from, how have they developed, how have they been employed? This is also a useful kind of comparative legal study.



The alternative is to ... seize the opportunity to enlarge one's comparative scope and treat "law" not as a set of norms, but as a complex and dynamic social sub-system with deep historical-cultural dimensions.



I push rather hard for the proposition that one who is going to be a comparative lawyer should become thoroughly familiar with a given foreign legal system. Not just the doctrinal part, not just the rules, and so forth, but the way it works--the whole fabric.



JHM: “legal tradtion”

a set of deeply rooted, historically conditioned attitudes about the nature of law, about the role of law in the society and the polity, about the proper organization and operation of a legal system, and about the way law is or should be made, applied, studied, perfected, and taught.


JHM: “civil law tradition”

There was some French unhappiness with my suggestion that contemporary French law is not typical of the civil law tradition, but it demonstrably is not typical. Interesting and important, yes, but typical, no. Where, among the dozens of contemporary civil law systems, will you find anything equivalent to the tortured French approach to constitutional review of legislative, administrative, and judicial action? Where else, among the many high courts in civil law nations, does one find anything similar to the constipated way decisions of the Cour de

cassation are stated and justified?


JHM: civil law traditionThere have also been a few murmurs of protest at my suggestion that German law is atypical, but again, it clearly is not. Interesting and important, yes, but typical, no. How many civil law nations have chosen to follow the German legislative model? How many other civil law nations employ anything remotely resembling the Referendarzeit in the professional formation of their lawyers and judges? What features of modern German law have been widely adopted or emulated among other civil law nations? Nineteenth-century German legal thought is extremely interesting. It arose, among other things, as a reaction against what Savigny and others perceived to be the excesses of French rationalism, but it was much, much more.Its systematic and formalist aspects were at one time the subject of intense scholarly debate and produced an extensive literature. This is the principal contribution of modern German law to the civil law tradition.


JHM on judicial cases

We have already touched on the misguided assumption that Americans study cases because for us the law is in the cases rather than in the statutes. But case study is a very inefficient way to learn rules of law. We study cases because they are culturally rich and become because they show the legal process--the "law machine"--in action, in a way that theoretical works and student manuals can not. Cases are repositories of legal culture.


purpose of comparative law

• Ernst Rabel (d. 1955): Comparative law is concerned with the questions of similarities, differences, and the mutual influence between legal systems (Rechtsordnungen)



Jerome Hall (d. 1992): comparative analysis of law is concerned with the delineation of differences against a background of similarities.



Arthur von Mehren (d. 2006) refers to the range and complexity of the differences that can lie behind a facade of similarity between legal traditions.



Sir Basil Markesinis argues that we must try to overcome obstacles of terminology and classification in order to show that foreign law is not very different from ours but only appears to be so.



Zweigert and Koetz: comparative legal studies helps to deepen our belief in the existence of a unitary sense of justice, and points to the universality of legal science and the transcendent values of law.


• F.H. Lawson (d. 1983): “One can be a very much better English lawyer for knowing some French law.”



Merryman: Perhaps what you really are talking about is attitude. If you set out to find differences, you will find them. If you set out to find similarities, you will find them.


JHM on equity and justice

“Lawyers, at least common law lawyers, have a basic and continuing concern for equity, not merely because of the historic existence in the common law of equity courts and equity jurisprudence, but because their education requires them to face and deal with the justice of the individual case.”


JHM on German legal science

What is "unusual in the extreme" in the common law world is the attempt too build a general theory of law. There is no admired and influential common law equivalent of German legal science.

But there has been a great deal of the "common core" kind of thing in the United States: Williston, Wigmore, Restatements of the Law, etc.


puposes of comparative legal studies


historical development

1869 Société de législation Compareé founded

1900 first congress of the Société– the basis for all law was to be found in the rules arising from

common laws– The purpose of comparative studies was to identify these

common rules

1924 Internationale Akademie für Rechtsvergleichung founded– „The main purpose of the Akademie is to concern itself with

historical aspects of compartive law ... – and with the improvement of the laws of the various countries

of the world … – by conquering differences and harmonising them.“

• 1991: „The purpose of the Akademie is the compartive study of legal systems. “


Article 38 Statute of the Court of International Justice

(1) The Court, whose function is to decide in accordance with international law such disputes as are submitted to it, shall apply:

(a) international conventions, whether general or particular, establishing rules expressly recognized by the contesting states;

(b) international custom, as evidence of a general practice accepted as law;

(c) the general principles of law recognized by civilized nations;

(d) subject to the provisions of Article 59, judicial decisions and the teachings of the most highly qualified publicists of the various nations, as subsidiary means for the determination of rules of law, (2) This provision shall not prejudice the power of the Court to decide a case ex aequo et bono, if the parties agree thereto.


jura novit curia

• The German judge is expected to know German law, including case-law, doctrine, German IPL, as well as the law of his state (Land), as long as it is formal statutory law.

• If the law does not know the law, he is to determine it on his own initiative (BGH 77, 38 mwN (auch zu den Grenzen dieser Pflicht) und NJW 84, 2764, BGH v. 20.7.90 XII ZR 73/89, Fam RZ 90/=NJW 1990/2886)

• [the source and influence of this doctrine will be discussed later in the lecture on legal philosophy]


§ 293 Zivilprozessordnung

• Fremdes Recht; Gewohnheitsrecht; Statuten

• „Das in einem anderen Staat geltende Recht, die Gewohnheitsrechte und Statuten bedürfen des Beweises nur insofern, als sie dem Gericht unbekannt sind.

• „Bei Ermittlung dieser Rechtsnormen ist das Gericht auf die von den Parteien beigebrachten Nachweise nicht beschränkt;

• „es ist befugt, auch andere Erkenntnisquellen zu benutzen und zum Zwecke einer solchen Benutzung das Erforderliche anzuordnen.“

• Foreign law; customary law; statutes

• The law of another country, the customary law and statutes, need only be proved to the extent these are unknown to the court.

• In determining these legal rules, the court is not limited to the evidence adduced by the parties;

• it is authorized to use other sources and to order what is necessary to such use.


jura novit curia

• not (directly) part of German statute law

• Can be argued that it is indirectly by negative implication (Rückkehrschluss)


purposes (according to Zweigert/Kötz)

• aid to the legislature

• aid to courts interpreting statutes

• importance to university education

• making law uniform

• development of a common (general) law (such as common principles or core principles)


summary of purposes

• knowledge of foreign law

• improvement of law (and its application)

• harmonisation, uniformity–Principles of European Contract Law

–Unidroit Principles of International Commercial Contracts

– lex mercatoria?

• identifying universals


• Rodolfo Sacco: The need to justify comparison in law by an appeal to its practical use can verge on the ridiculous.


methods of comparative legal studies


• comparing terms (Begriffsvergleich)

• comparing rules (Normenvergleich)

• functional comparison (Mikrovergleich)

• sytematic studies (Makrovergleich)

• theoretical comparisons

methods of comparative legal studies


Begriffsvergleich

§ 211 Mord StGB

(1) Der Mörder wird mit lebenslanger Freiheitsstrafe bestraft.

(2) Mörder ist, wer aus Mordlust, zur Befriedigung des Geschlechtstriebs, aus Habgier oder sonst aus niedrigen Beweggründen, heimtückisch oder grausam oder mit gemeingefährlichen Mitteln oder um eine andere Straftat zu ermöglichen oder zu verdecken, einen Menschen tötet.

§ 187 California Penal Code

1. Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being, or a fetus, with malice aforethought.

2. [A legal abortion does not constitute murder.)


Normenvergleich

§ 211 Mord StGB

(1) Der Mörder wird mit lebenslanger Freiheitsstrafe bestraft.

(2) Mörder ist, wer aus Mordlust, zur Befriedigung des Geschlechtstriebs, aus Habgier oder sonst aus niedrigen Beweggründen, heimtückisch oder grausam oder mit gemeingefährlichen Mitteln oder um eine andere Straftat zu ermöglichen oder zu verdecken, einen Menschen tötet.

§ 190 California Penal Code

(a) Every person guilty of murder in the first degree shall be punished by death, imprisonment in the state prison for life without the possibility of parole, or imprisonment in the state prison for a term of 25 years to life. The penalty to be applied shall be determined as provided in Sections 190.1, 190.2, 190.3, 190.4, and 190.5. Except as provided in subdivision (b), (c), or (d), every person guilty of murder in the second degree shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for a term of 15 years to life.


188. Such malice may be express or implied. It is express whenthere is manifested a deliberate intention unlawfully to take awaythe life of a fellow creature. It is implied, when no considerableprovocation appears, or when the circumstances attending the killingshow an abandoned and malignant heart. When it is shown that the killing resulted from the intentionaldoing of an act with express or implied malice as defined above, noother mental state need be shown to establish the mental state ofmalice aforethought. Neither an awareness of the obligation to actwithin the general body of laws regulating society nor acting despitesuch awareness is included within the definition of malice.

189. All murder which is perpetrated by means of a destructivedevice or explosive, a weapon of mass destruction, knowing use ofammunition designed primarily to penetrate metal or armor, poison,lying in wait, torture, or by any other kind of willful, deliberate,and premeditated killing, or which is committed in the perpetrationof, or attempt to perpetrate, arson, rape, carjacking, robbery,burglary, mayhem, kidnapping, train wrecking, or any act punishableunder Section 206, 286, 288, 288a, or 289, or any murder which isperpetrated by means of discharging a firearm from a motor vehicle,intentionally at another person outside of the vehicle with theintent to inflict death, is murder of the first degree. All otherkinds of murders are of the second degree. As used in this section, "destructive device" means anydestructive device as defined in Section 12301, and "explosive" meansany explosive as defined in Section 12000 of the Health and SafetyCode. As used in this section, "weapon of mass destruction" means anyitem defined in Section 11417. To prove the killing was "deliberate and premeditated," it shallnot be necessary to prove the defendant maturely and meaningfullyreflected upon the gravity of his or her act.


Funktionaler Vergleich

• Straferlass (commutation of sentence) vom California Board of Parole Hearings

• Begnadigung (pardon) vom Gouverneur (nicht vom Präsidenten)

• Strafaussetzung zur Bewährung vom Gericht

• Begnadigung vom Bundespräsidenten oder Ministerpräsidenten eines Bundeslandes

• Kann eine Begnadigung widerrufen werden?


• RAF-Terrorist Christian Klar wurde wegen mehrerer Morde und Mordversuche zu siebenmal lebenslang plus 15 Jahren verurteilt

• Nach 24 Jahren im Gefängnis stellte er ein Gnadengesuch

• Bundespräsident Horst Köhler lehnte Klars Gnadengesuch nach einer persönlichen Anhörung ab


Funktionaler Vergleich

§ 1549 California Civil CodeA contract is an agreement to

do or not to do a certain thing.

§ 1550 California Civil Code. It is essential to the existence

of a contract that there should be:

1. Parties capable of contracting;

2. Their consent; 3. A lawful object; and, 4. A sufficient cause or

consideration.

• § 151 BGB • Der Vertrag kommt durch

die Annahme des Antrags zustande, ohne dass die Annahme dem Antragenden gegenüber erklärt zu werden braucht, wenn eine solche Erklärung nach der Verkehrssitte nicht zu erwarten ist oder der Antragende auf sie verzichtet hat. Der Zeitpunkt, in welchem der Antrag erlischt, bestimmt sich nach dem aus dem Antrag oder den Umständen zu entnehmenden Willen des Antragenden.


theoritical comparisons

• orality/written legal culture

• Legal certainty/individual justice (Einzelfalljustiz)

• nationalisation/privatisation

• case-law (Richterrecht)/professorial law (Professorenrecht)

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