An Introduction to German Law and Legal Culture
Text and Materials

A lively, critical, and deeply informed survey of German law and legal culture.

Russell A. Miller (Author)

9781316506370, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 17 October 2024

502 pages
24.4 x 16.9 x 2.6 cm, 0.85 kg

'Although Miller's book is primarily aimed at law students outside Germany, it is equally recommended for German students (ideally those already at an advanced level of education) ... The didactic value of the foreign description of one's own lies in a productive disruption of the typical mindset of a lawyer trained in Germany, namely by presenting German law both in a non-German language and from the simultaneously distanced and different perspective of an author whose primary legal socialization took place outside Germany ... Russell A. Miller's book can be read as a double declaration of love: firstly, to German legal culture and, secondly, to the culture of a textbook that takes its readers on a veritable 'intellectual adventure' ... German legal scholarship can only consider itself fortunate to have such a declaration of love.' Jonas Plebuch, Archiv des öffentlichen Rechts/ Archive of Public Law (AöR)

An Introduction to German Law and Legal Culture offers students, comparative law scholars, and practitioners an insightful and innovative survey of the German legal system. While recognizing the significant influence of the Civil Law tradition in the German legal culture, the book also considers other legal traditions – Common Law, Socialist Law, Islamic Law, Adversarial Law, European Law – that are woven into the varied and colorful fabric of the German legal culture. The book provides an informed yet accessible introduction to the foundations of German law as well as to the theory and doctrine of some of the most relevant fields of law: Private Law, Constitutional Law, Administrative Law, Criminal Law, Procedural Law, and European Law. It is an engaging and pluralistic portrayal of one of the world's most interesting, important, and frequently modelled legal systems.

1. Introduction: encounters with foreign legal cultures
2. The civil law tradition
3. Germany's plural legal culture
4. Foundations I: legal history
5. Foundations II: political and legal institutions
6. Foundations III: legal education, legal method, legal actors
7. German private law – the civil code
8. German public law – constitutionalism
9. German public law – administrative law
10. German criminal law
11. German procedural law
12. The Europeanization of German law
13. Epilogue: Germany's German law.

Subject Areas: Comparative law [LAM]