The German Approach to the Globalisation and Harmonisation of Civil Procedure: Balancing National Particularities and International Open-Mindedness

Abstract

AbstractGermany participates actively in the competition between the different judicial systems. The German Bar Association, the German Judges Association and the German Notaries Association have even published a brochure entitled Law—Made in Germany with a view to informing about the advantages of the German judicial system and German law. This initiative has launched an important reform process in Germany. A bill now before Parliament proposes to establish special court chambers for transnational commercial disputes where the entire proceedings, from the statement of claim up to the judgment, shall be conducted in English. The reform process, however, concentrates on the rules which govern the proceedings in German courts. The situation is different for the classical area of international civil procedure. Here, Germany still gives much importance to the idea of state sovereignty in the administration of cross-border judicial assistance, and the German way of recognising and enforcing foreign judgments from non-EU Member States reflects an ambivalent mixture of an open-minded point of departure on the one hand, and an accentuation of national interests and concepts on the other. Against this background the present paper comes to the conclusion that the modernisation of German civil procedure should be based on four aspects: first, concentration on the parties’ interests rather than on the idea of state sovereignty; second, recognition of party autonomy in respect of procedural rules; third, specialisation of judges who are capable of conducting the entire proceedings in English; and, fourth, adoption of special procedural rules for transnational cases.KeywordsCivil ProcedureForeign JudgmentsTransnational CasesGerman JudgesThird-party NoticeThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.