Jura (alle)

This class makes the nature of Comparative Law as well as its functions and aims accessible to students from different legal backgrounds. As studying even one legal system fully is difficult and time-consuming, the course must necessarily take a selective approach to comparative law and to the multitude of legal systems in the world. The class Comparative Law I therefore will focus on European Legal Traditions, whose similarities and differences are an important driver of European harmonization. Matching the overall aim of this module the course will focus on private law and business law aspects of comparative law.

The course has three main components. The first part will cover the origins and utility of comparative law, its aims, tools and methods. This part will particularly focus on the legal orders, which the participants of the class are most familiar with.

The main second part of the course will look at common features of generally accepted concepts of both contract law and of building bricks necessary for any business law, such as division of work, liability, tort law and insurance. The different possible solutions for these problems, which appear in different forms in many jurisdictions, will be presented, followed by an analysis of how they are governed by legal orders belonging to different legal families. Lines of influence and hybrids will similarly be covered.

The course equips the students with fundamental knowledge about the application of competition law. European and German competition law are addressed equally as well as their relations­hip with one another. The aim is to capacitate the students to apply competition law to concrete cases and help them understand the competitive concerns that might arise from certain behavior by undertakings. The course consists of seven parts:

• Introduction (What is competition and why do we care about it? What is competition law?)
• Restrictive practices (Art. 101 TFEU/§§ 1–3 German Competition Act)
• Abuse of a dominant position (Art. 102 TFEU/§§ 18–21 German Competition Act)
• Public enforcement
• Private enforcement
• Merger control in the EU
• Merger control in Germany

The course focuses not only on the similarities between European and German competition law but also on the differences in the application by the European Commission and courts on the one side and the German competition authorities and courts on the other side. The course also covers distinct features particular to the German Competition Act that are missing in the European provisions, e.g. prohibited conduct of undertakings with relative or superior market power, damages and certain modifications that have been adopted with respect to digital markets.

The course will take place online only.

The course addresses compliance requirements in several fields of law. Roughly the first half of the course will be dedicated to compliance programmes in general. The analysis is broken down into the upstream phase, the governance, and the downstream phase of an effective compliance programme. This includes issues, such as “culture” of compliance, codes of conduct, the “tone at the top”, training, audits, and whistleblowing. The second half will be dedicated to the specific requirements for an effective compliance programme in three important areas of law:   

• Anti-corruption compliance
• Antitrust compliance
• Data protection compliance

In this context, the course will deal with the most important legislation in the respective fields. Due to their global geographical scope in the field of anti-corruption compliance, these are first and foremost the UK Bribery Act and the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Regarding antitrust law, special attention will be given to leniency programmes and the possibilities of a compliance defence in cartel fine procedures. Moreover, the course will cover the requirements imposed on businesses by the General Data Protection Regulation.

Learning outcomes and qualification goals:

Students having completed the course will understand the importance of legal compliance for businesses and know the main methods of implementing and ensuring it. They will moreover be familiar with the most important legislation and be able to identify specific requirements of a compliance programme regarding different legal provisions.

The course gives an introduction to German private law especially for foreign law students. The course begins with an overview of the legal sources of German law. In particular, the special position of the Civil Code and its historical development will be discussed.

Then the most important legal areas of the Civil Code will be worked out on the basis of systematic descriptions and case solutions. By focusing on the law of torts, the law of obligations and the law of property, the working method in German civil law is clarified. Short introductions to inheritance and family law, company law and civil procedural law round off the course through private law.

Structure

- Definition of private law, historical development

- Structure of the BGB

- tort law

- law of obligations

- property law

- Inheritance and Family Law, Company Law and Civil Procedure Law at a Glance

The aim of the course is to ensure that students are familiar with the structures of German civil law by the end of the course and that they are able to handle smaller cases with the knowledge they have acquired.

Continental European law strongly relies on written legal sources such as codes. Thus, theoretically, legal scholars from European nation states have similar approaches to handling the written sources when working on a concrete legal case. Still, the respective national legal tradition a lawyer first was trained in strongly influences the way she/he will interpret and apply the law to the facts of a case. To a significant extent this phenomenon can be attributed to different schools of legal thinking, which have found their way into the national codes and academic traditions. They lie between the lines of the respective sources and are often influencing unnoticedly the reasoning adopted. In order to understand these approaches of both lawmakers and lawyers it is very helpful to acquaint oneself with the thinking of those persons, which have had long-lasting influence on the formation of national law & legal thinking.

In order to grasp the context of the works of Europe’s – and Germany’s – keenest legal thinkers we have to go back to the roots and acquaint us with the more than two thousand year old tradition of ancient Roman law. Already a glance at the titles of the main works of Carl Friedrich von Savigny (1779-1861) History of Roman law in the Middle Age (1815-31) and The System of today’s Roman Law (1840-49) displays the everlasting impact on European legal tradition. Accordingly, also the course will follow a timeline, which starts in the age of classic Roman law and antique elocution – a powerful means of rhetoric –, then covers the renaissance of jurisprudence in the High Middle Ages and Early Modern Era and finishes with the capstone of this private law tradition, namely Bernhard Windscheid’s ‘Lehr­buch des Pandektenrechts’, which heavily influenced the German Civil Code. The selection of legal thinkers is either motivated by the outstanding quality of their works (cf. Cicero, Papinian, Accursius und Savigny) or their paramount influence on our understanding of law (cf. Svarez and Rabel) or a combination of both.

• The Roman Foundations of Law: Cicero, Papinian and Tribonian
• The Renaissance of Roman Law in the Middle ages: Accursius, Baldus and Zasius
• The foundations of the common law: Edward Coke
• The labyrinth of creditors: Salgado de Somoza
• Legal concepts of the age of enlightenment: Thomasius
• Early codification: Carl Gottlieb Svarez
• The pandectist tradition: Friedrich von Savigny
• The ‘Interessensjurisprudenz’: Rudolf von Jhering
• The foundations of the German Civil Code: Bernhard Windscheid
• From comparative to a uniform sales law: Ernst Rabel
• Current private law methodology: Karl Larenz and Claus Canaris

• Development of European private law
• The different layers of legal sources
• Uniform sales law
• UNIDROIT and PECL
• Excessive harmonization
• The function of soft law
• Freedom of contracts as corner stone of European private law
• Restraints of party autonomy: the concept of the weaker party

• Dennis Howitt – Introduction to Forensic and Criminal Psychology, 2018, 6th Edition
• Sandie Taylor – Forensic Psychology: The basis, 2015

With her seven books on the adventures of the orphaned wizard Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling has created a magical universe that shows a lot of parallels to our everyday life. This is also true for legal topics: the books give a lot of information about what magical law is and how it functions. Examples are the Ministry of Magic or the criminal trials play a prominent part in books 4 and 5. In this seminar, we will look at legal questions arising in the Harry Potter universe and compare them to the law as we know it in our world (muggle law). Questions that might be asked are how differences between magical law and muggle law can be explained or whether magical law complies with universally acknowledged fundamental and human rights.

The seminar is open to all students who wish to participate. This includes foreign exchange students, Bachelor students, students who plan on taking the First State Exam and (future) PhD students who need extra credit. Please note that the overall number of places is limited. Students who wish to participate should be prepared to write an essay in English or German during term time and hold an oral presentation in English.

The seminar will take place as a bloc seminar at the end of November. Further information about the seminar and the application process will be given at a preliminary meeting in the first week of term (beginning of September). Please check  the website of Prof. Schneider in August for the exact date and any further information (https://www.jura.uni-mannheim.de/schneider/).

• Cassese, Antonio, ‘International Criminal Law’ (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008)
• Cryer, Robert, ‘An Introduction to International Criminal Law and Procedure’ (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010)
• Schabas, William A., ‘The International Criminal Court: A Commentary on the Rome Statute’ (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010)
• Werle, Gerhard, ‘Principles of International Criminal Law’ (The Hague, Asser, 2005)

Course Description:

The course provides a general introduction to German Constitutional Law i.e. the constitution, its background and contents and methods to work with constitutional legal texts.

The German Grundgesetz (Basic Law) which up to this day forms the formal constitutional document of the Federal Republic of Germany has its roots in the allied occupation of Western Germany after World War II. It has proven to be a reliable foundation for the development of the German democratic system and the federal state. The provision of fundamental rights (Art. 1 – 19) puts the Grundgesetz in the tradition of European and North American human rights thinking. It has had an enormous impact on all German law.

Although experiencing some changes throughout the years – especially during the process of the German reunification – the general structure and main provisions of the Grundgesetz remained unchanged.

The course will cover the structure of the German Grundgesetz and its most important provisions while putting a particular focus on the first chapter containing the fundamental rights provisions. Additionally, students will learn about constitutional law in general, the federal structure and the fundamental constitutional principles of the Federal Republic as well as understand the function of the constitutional organs and the legislative process.

Contents:

• The German legal system
• Constitutional Law
• Fundamental Rights
• Fundamental Constitutional Rights
• The Federal State
• Constitutional organs
• Legislative procedure
• Public administration
• The judicial system

Learning Target:

Students will be able to understand the basic principles and most important provisions of the Grundgesetz and solve simple cases regarding fundamental rights. They will be familiar with the structure of the federal state and its function as well as its most important constitutional, administrative and judicial organs. Students can assess by way of comparison similarities and dissimilarities in other legal systems.

Literature:

No specific textbook is required. Additional non-mandatory literature recommendations will be given in the first lecture.

Examination:

Written Examination

The course is designed to give a comprehensive survey of German private law, i.e. general rules of private law, commercial law, and civil procedure.

An important structural decision of German private law (sic!) is already displayed by the fact that the Civil Code is the ‘law book for citizens’ – today including consumers – whereas particular rules for businesses are comprised in the commercial code, corporate law, and various other codifications.

However, both general private law, and commercial law are enforced by the same rules of civil procedure. The German Civil Code is of paramount importance for understanding German law as its concept and system has impressed the legal thinking of generations of German lawyers. Students will be acquainted with both its sources, and its general principles. In the course of the class students will learn to work with the German civil code, understand the underlying system, influences on the Civil Code from the European Union (EU), and the accepted methods of interpretation.

• Introduction to German Private Law
•  The division between public law, general private law and commercial law
•  The German Civil Code
•  Influence from the EU
•  Basic concepts and means of interpretation
•  Function and Content of the General Part
•  Law of obligations (contracts, torts, and unjust enrichment)
•  Property Law
•  Law of succession and company law (including partnerships and corporations)
• The system of law enforcement

This class makes the nature of Comparative Law as well as its functions and aims accessible to students from different legal backgrounds. As studying even one legal system fully is difficult and time-consuming, the course must necessarily take a selective approach to comparative law and to the multitude of legal systems in the world. The class Comparative Law I therefore will focus on European Legal Traditions, whose similarities and differences are an important driver of European harmonization. Matching the overall aim of this module the course will focus on private law and business law aspects of comparative law.

The course has three main components. The first part will cover the origins and utility of comparative law, its aims, tools and methods. This part will particularly focus on the legal orders, which the participants of the class are most familiar with.

The main second part of the course will look at common features of generally accepted concepts of both contract law and of building bricks necessary for any business law, such as division of work, liability, tort law and insurance. The different possible solutions for these problems, which appear in different forms in many jurisdictions, will be presented, followed by an analysis of how they are governed by legal orders belonging to different legal families. Lines of influence and hybrids will similarly be covered.

The course equips the students with fundamental knowledge about the application of competition law. European and German competition law are addressed equally as well as their relations­hip with one another. The aim is to capacitate the students to apply competition law to concrete cases and help them understand the competitive concerns that might arise from certain behavior by undertakings. The course consists of seven parts:

• Introduction (What is competition and why do we care about it? What is competition law?)
• Restrictive practices (Art. 101 TFEU/§§ 1–3 German Competition Act)
• Abuse of a dominant position (Art. 102 TFEU/§§ 18–21 German Competition Act)
• Public enforcement
• Private enforcement
• Merger control in the EU
• Merger control in Germany

The course focuses not only on the similarities between European and German competition law but also on the differences in the application by the European Commission and courts on the one side and the German competition authorities and courts on the other side. The course also covers distinct features particular to the German Competition Act that are missing in the European provisions, e.g. prohibited conduct of undertakings with relative or superior market power, damages and certain modifications that have been adopted with respect to digital markets.

The course will take place online only.

The course addresses compliance requirements in several fields of law. Roughly the first half of the course will be dedicated to compliance programmes in general. The analysis is broken down into the upstream phase, the governance, and the downstream phase of an effective compliance programme. This includes issues, such as “culture” of compliance, codes of conduct, the “tone at the top”, training, audits, and whistleblowing. The second half will be dedicated to the specific requirements for an effective compliance programme in three important areas of law:   

• Anti-corruption compliance
• Antitrust compliance
• Data protection compliance

In this context, the course will deal with the most important legislation in the respective fields. Due to their global geographical scope in the field of anti-corruption compliance, these are first and foremost the UK Bribery Act and the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Regarding antitrust law, special attention will be given to leniency programmes and the possibilities of a compliance defence in cartel fine procedures. Moreover, the course will cover the requirements imposed on businesses by the General Data Protection Regulation.

Learning outcomes and qualification goals:

Students having completed the course will understand the importance of legal compliance for businesses and know the main methods of implementing and ensuring it. They will moreover be familiar with the most important legislation and be able to identify specific requirements of a compliance programme regarding different legal provisions.

The course gives a thorough introduction to the legal problems, which may occur in the course of the use of the internet in general and e-commerce in particular. It is focused on the view of business related activities. Based on an introduction to the infrastructure of the internet the course will analyse the major legal issues of five economically relevant sections :

• E-Commerce & Private Law
• Advertising for e-commerce
• Online shops and copyright law
• Domains
• Cross border e-commerce

The chapter on E-Commerce & Private Law will inter alia cover formation of contract, standard terms and conditions, consumer protection and specific problems connected to internet auctions and mobile commerce.

Advertising for e-commerce will take a look at rules of unfair competition, required imprint information, the ban on spamming, specific requirements for sales of pharmaceutical products via the internet and, of course, on ad-words. Further the liability under tele media law, for hyperlinks, hotspot operators and for user generated content will be an important issue.

The section on copyright law and online shops will focus on copyright restrictions for the presentation of content (including file sharing and streaming) and will take a look on the protection of content and websites.

The section on domains will explain the domain name system and its implications on trademark law and unfair competition law. It will also look at the possibilities to protect a domain as trademark. Finally and the legal consequences of infringement will be covered.

The course gives an introduction to German private law especially for foreign law students. The course begins with an overview of the legal sources of German law. In particular, the special position of the Civil Code and its historical development will be discussed.

Then the most important legal areas of the Civil Code will be worked out on the basis of systematic descriptions and case solutions. By focusing on the law of torts, the law of obligations and the law of property, the working method in German civil law is clarified. Short introductions to inheritance and family law, company law and civil procedural law round off the course through private law.

Structure

- Definition of private law, historical development

- Structure of the BGB

- tort law

- law of obligations

- property law

- Inheritance and Family Law, Company Law and Civil Procedure Law at a Glance

The aim of the course is to ensure that students are familiar with the structures of German civil law by the end of the course and that they are able to handle smaller cases with the knowledge they have acquired.

Over the past 40 years, the rules on Competition Law (Antitrust) in the EU have developed into a substantial body of law. They constitute directly applicable rules for enterprises, and as such they are of immediate concern to them. Contracts in violation of the rules are unenforceable and huge fines are imposed in case of infringements while parties that suffered damages may litigate before a national civil court.

This course offers an introduction to main areas of EU competition law illustrated by practical examples which in part reflect the lecturer’s own experience as an eminent German antitrust practitioner. Core elements of EU competition law treated include the concepts of horizontal and vertical restraints of competition, the importance of market definitions and the various techniques used therefore, the role of market power for Articles 101 and 102 TFEU (and implementing regulations and guidelines) and the basic outlines of European merger control.

It is the aim of the course to provide the participants with a solid basis for the practice of competition law. The course will cover the main features of the EU rules both from a substantive and a procedural perspective, including the relations­hip between EU and national competition law as well as the economic principles and procedures concerning merger control.

Continental European law strongly relies on written legal sources such as codes. Thus, theoretically, legal scholars from European nation states have similar approaches to handling the written sources when working on a concrete legal case. Still, the respective national legal tradition a lawyer first was trained in strongly influences the way she/he will interpret and apply the law to the facts of a case. To a significant extent this phenomenon can be attributed to different schools of legal thinking, which have found their way into the national codes and academic traditions. They lie between the lines of the respective sources and are often influencing unnoticedly the reasoning adopted. In order to understand these approaches of both lawmakers and lawyers it is very helpful to acquaint oneself with the thinking of those persons, which have had long-lasting influence on the formation of national law & legal thinking.

In order to grasp the context of the works of Europe’s – and Germany’s – keenest legal thinkers we have to go back to the roots and acquaint us with the more than two thousand year old tradition of ancient Roman law. Already a glance at the titles of the main works of Carl Friedrich von Savigny (1779-1861) History of Roman law in the Middle Age (1815-31) and The System of today’s Roman Law (1840-49) displays the everlasting impact on European legal tradition. Accordingly, also the course will follow a timeline, which starts in the age of classic Roman law and antique elocution – a powerful means of rhetoric –, then covers the renaissance of jurisprudence in the High Middle Ages and Early Modern Era and finishes with the capstone of this private law tradition, namely Bernhard Windscheid’s ‘Lehr­buch des Pandektenrechts’, which heavily influenced the German Civil Code. The selection of legal thinkers is either motivated by the outstanding quality of their works (cf. Cicero, Papinian, Accursius und Savigny) or their paramount influence on our understanding of law (cf. Svarez and Rabel) or a combination of both.

• The Roman Foundations of Law: Cicero, Papinian and Tribonian
• The Renaissance of Roman Law in the Middle ages: Accursius, Baldus and Zasius
• The foundations of the common law: Edward Coke
• The labyrinth of creditors: Salgado de Somoza
• Legal concepts of the age of enlightenment: Thomasius
• Early codification: Carl Gottlieb Svarez
• The pandectist tradition: Friedrich von Savigny
• The ‘Interessensjurisprudenz’: Rudolf von Jhering
• The foundations of the German Civil Code: Bernhard Windscheid
• From comparative to a uniform sales law: Ernst Rabel
• Current private law methodology: Karl Larenz and Claus Canaris

All private persons or companies upon entering one of the EU Member States not only come under this single State’s national legal order. They are immediately affected by “European Law”, the law of the European Union granting them certain rights and privileges but also requiring them to comply with certain duties and obligations.

The internal market is one of the essential cornerstones of the European Union. The Market Freedoms lie at its heart. The free movement of goods, persons, services and capital is essential for unifying the markets while ensuring competition and trade within Europe. The freedoms grant direct effective rights to private persons and legal persons, which can be enforced before national courts, and guarantee the freedom of contract in a transnational perspective.

The course will focus on a systematic survey of the market freedoms by the means of studying the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.

• General concept of the market freedoms
• Development and aim of market freedoms
• Leading cases of the European Court of Justice
• Function of market freedom fostering integration
• Further development of market freedoms
• Impact of market freedoms (compliance)

• Development of European private law
• The different layers of legal sources
• Uniform sales law
• UNIDROIT and PECL
• Excessive harmonization
• The function of soft law
• Freedom of contracts as corner stone of European private law
• Restraints of party autonomy: the concept of the weaker party

European Union Law has an increasing impact on the taxation of private individuals as well as of companies doing business in Europe. While the European Union has no original tax authority its law has a major influence on national tax laws.

The course will start with an introduction into European Union Tax Law, the aims and measures so far taken by European institutions. After that the course will cover the positive harmonization of indirect taxes mainly by European directives. In a third part the course will focus on secondary law harmonizing direct taxes in Europe, e.g. the Parent-Subsidiary Directive. In a last section the course deals with the importance of the fundamental freedoms for the taxation in Europe. A special focus will be put on the case law of the European Court of Justice.

• Basic principles of European Law
• Harmonization of indirect and direct taxes by primary and secondary law
• Fundamental freedoms referring to taxation in Europe
• Important case law

With her seven books on the adventures of the orphaned wizard Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling has created a magical universe that shows a lot of parallels to our everyday life. This is also true for legal topics: the books give a lot of information about what magical law is and how it functions. Examples are the Ministry of Magic or the criminal trials play a prominent part in books 4 and 5. In this seminar, we will look at legal questions arising in the Harry Potter universe and compare them to the law as we know it in our world (muggle law). Questions that might be asked are how differences between magical law and muggle law can be explained or whether magical law complies with universally acknowledged fundamental and human rights.

The seminar is open to all students who wish to participate. This includes foreign exchange students, Bachelor students, students who plan on taking the First State Exam and (future) PhD students who need extra credit. Please note that the overall number of places is limited. Students who wish to participate should be prepared to write an essay in English or German during term time and hold an oral presentation in English.

The seminar will take place as a bloc seminar at the end of November. Further information about the seminar and the application process will be given at a preliminary meeting in the first week of term (beginning of September). Please check  the website of Prof. Schneider in August for the exact date and any further information (https://www.jura.uni-mannheim.de/schneider/).

Parties to international disputes tend to strive for litigation in their home countries. This is primarily attributable to the parties’ and their representatives’ familiarity with the system and language. This tendency can even be observed in cases where an informed choice would prove a foreign venue to be more favourable, be it for procedural reasons (e.g. evidence, costs of litigation) or matters of substance (applicable law, ordre public, mandatory rules of the forum, scope of private autonomy).

The opposite effect can be observed with regard to arbitration. Arbitration often is chosen by parties in the belief that it is a superior means of dispute resolution, e.g. because it is said to be time- and cost-efficient, neutral, arbitrators ensure high legal quality and superior understanding of business contexts. In fact arbitration can be a very reasonable means of solving legal disputes. But whether state courts must be shy of the comparison will depend on the arbitration rules and venue chosen and the subject matter or the dispute.

The course consists of two parts: The first focuses on cross border litigation before state courts, the second will provide an overview on arbitration law.

• Introduction: Impact of the forum on the dispute (lex fori and lex causae)
• International Jurisdiction of state courts (Brussels I Regulation)
• Provisional measures and procedural strategy
• Access to evidence in cross-border litigation
• Recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments (Brussels I Regulation)
• Advantages and Disadvantages of Arbitration
• Drafting arbitration agreements
• Introduction of common arbitration rules (ICC, LCIA, Swiss Rules, DIS)
• Conduct of arbitration proceedings
• Enforcing arbitration awards and the New York Convention

• Cassese, Antonio, ‘International Criminal Law’ (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008)
• Cryer, Robert, ‘An Introduction to International Criminal Law and Procedure’ (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010)
• Schabas, William A., ‘The International Criminal Court: A Commentary on the Rome Statute’ (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010)
• Werle, Gerhard, ‘Principles of International Criminal Law’ (The Hague, Asser, 2005)

Course Description:

The course provides a general introduction to German Constitutional Law i.e. the constitution, its background and contents and methods to work with constitutional legal texts.

The German Grundgesetz (Basic Law) which up to this day forms the formal constitutional document of the Federal Republic of Germany has its roots in the allied occupation of Western Germany after World War II. It has proven to be a reliable foundation for the development of the German democratic system and the federal state. The provision of fundamental rights (Art. 1 – 19) puts the Grundgesetz in the tradition of European and North American human rights thinking. It has had an enormous impact on all German law.

Although experiencing some changes throughout the years – especially during the process of the German reunification – the general structure and main provisions of the Grundgesetz remained unchanged.

The course will cover the structure of the German Grundgesetz and its most important provisions while putting a particular focus on the first chapter containing the fundamental rights provisions. Additionally, students will learn about constitutional law in general, the federal structure and the fundamental constitutional principles of the Federal Republic as well as understand the function of the constitutional organs and the legislative process.

Contents:

• The German legal system
• Constitutional Law
• Fundamental Rights
• Fundamental Constitutional Rights
• The Federal State
• Constitutional organs
• Legislative procedure
• Public administration
• The judicial system

Learning Target:

Students will be able to understand the basic principles and most important provisions of the Grundgesetz and solve simple cases regarding fundamental rights. They will be familiar with the structure of the federal state and its function as well as its most important constitutional, administrative and judicial organs. Students can assess by way of comparison similarities and dissimilarities in other legal systems.

Literature:

No specific textbook is required. Additional non-mandatory literature recommendations will be given in the first lecture.

Examination:

Written Examination

The course is designed to give a comprehensive survey of German private law, i.e. general rules of private law, commercial law, and civil procedure.

An important structural decision of German private law (sic!) is already displayed by the fact that the Civil Code is the ‘law book for citizens’ – today including consumers – whereas particular rules for businesses are comprised in the commercial code, corporate law, and various other codifications.

However, both general private law, and commercial law are enforced by the same rules of civil procedure. The German Civil Code is of paramount importance for understanding German law as its concept and system has impressed the legal thinking of generations of German lawyers. Students will be acquainted with both its sources, and its general principles. In the course of the class students will learn to work with the German civil code, understand the underlying system, influences on the Civil Code from the European Union (EU), and the accepted methods of interpretation.

• Introduction to German Private Law
•  The division between public law, general private law and commercial law
•  The German Civil Code
•  Influence from the EU
•  Basic concepts and means of interpretation
•  Function and Content of the General Part
•  Law of obligations (contracts, torts, and unjust enrichment)
•  Property Law
•  Law of succession and company law (including partnerships and corporations)
• The system of law enforcement