This year’s Frankfurt Roundtable on Investment Law and Investment Treaty Arbitration (Gesprächskreis Investitionsrecht und – Schiedsgerichtsbarkeit) is held on November 14, 2015. As always, Alfred Escher and Jan Schäfer are organizing the event in conjunction with the Frankfurt International Arbitration Center. Read More
Category: Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht)
Federal Constitutional Court on International Judicial Co-Operation – A US Perspective
Over at Letters Blogatory, Ted Folkman has picked up the decision of the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) on judicial assistance on which I reported earlier this week. Ted found a nice name for the case, In re Frau R.*, and shared an interesting observation from a US perspective: Read More
Federal Constitutional Court: Failure of Court To Seek International Judicial Assistance Violates Right to Effective Judicial Protection
The Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) has held that a court’s failure to avail itself of the tools of international judicial co-operation can amount to a violation of the party’s right to effective judicial protection (Recht auf effektiven Rechtsschutz).
The decision was made in a family law matter, where the existence and validity of an adoption in Romania was in dispute. In the proceedings before the Local Court (Amtsgericht) Frankfurt am Main, the aggrieved party had been unable to produce the underlying Romanian files, but had submitted communication from the respective Romanian authority, that a request from a German court to be granted access to the files would be entertained.
The local court, however, did not attempt to get hold of these files. Its failure to use “institutionalised facilities and measures of judicial assistance”, in particular those offered by the European Evidence Regulation and the European Judicial Network in Civil and Commercial Matters, in the circumstances of the case rendered its decision unconstitutional. Read More
TV Cameras to Be Allowed in German Courtrooms?
The Federal Ministry of Justice has put forward a proposal that would allow TV cameras into German courtrooms. But before you get all the excited about the prospect of bringing Court TV to Germany, look at the small print: the proposal would allow cameras only into the highest courts of the five branches of the judiciary in Germany*. And the TV cameras would be allowed to roll only when the presiding judge delivers a judgment, but not during a hearing. So what you would see on TV would just be five judges on the bench, with one of them reading a – no doubt well-reasoned – judgment. That’s as exiting as will it get, if the proposal is implemented. Read More