German law

“ We demand a German federal tribunal, to settle all political differences between the princes and their estates, as also between the different German governments. We demand a common law of settlement for all natives of Germany, and perfect liberty for them to settle in any German country. We demand that, for the future, there shall be no barriers raised against commerce and industry in Germany. ”

“ ARTICLE 277.—The nationals of the Allied and Associated Powers shall enjoy in German territory a constant protection for their persons and for their property, rights, and interests, and shall have free access to the courts of law. ”

“ How various have been the lawgivers who have dominated over the lives of individuals--the Jewish priests, the community of apostles, the Jurist schools of ancient Rome, the Longobard kings and the ambitious popes; and, again, together with laws which had originated in past ages and nations, there were the reminiscences from German antiquity--legal decisions, ordinances, codes of law, regulations and privileges. According to their decisions a man preserved or lost his house and farm, wife and child, and his property, either inherited or acquired. ”

“ Likewise the Reich governor of the Reich Gau Danzig/West Prussia had me informed that it would conform to his wishes if the German law were henceforth introduced legally in the Incorporated Eastern Territories. The introduction of German law is also necessary, because the regulation for the prevention of acts of violence in the Incorporated Eastern Territories, prepared by the Ministry of the Interior, tacitly implies the application of German criminal law and court constitutional law. ”

“ Furthermore, I expect the German legal profession to understand that the nation is not here for them, but that they are here for the nation; that is, the world, which includes Germany, must not decline in order that formal law may live, but that Germany must live, irrespective of the contradictions of formal justice. ”

“ Hardly that the German law should be adopted. It always is the law of the United States that governs within the jurisdiction of the United States, even when for some special occasion this country adopts a foreign law as its own. ”

“ German constitutional law, however, adopts another conception, and while it restrains individual rights for the benefit of a community, it also imposes upon the latter obligations to the profit of the individual. ”

“ There is no doubt that the new German constitution is the product of a sharp and determined conflict of classes. M. Brunet records the fact and gives the alignment of parties. No sophisticated person will ever imagine (whatever he may say) that the German fundamental law was drawn from abstract political thinking, theories about the rights of states, or reflections on the fate of Greek democracies and ancient Rome. The pressure of class interests is evident in almost every line. ”

“ How any intelligent lawyer could have come to any other conclusion it is not easy to imagine, since Germany confessed its crime while in the very act of committing it, for on the very day that the German troops crossed the Belgian frontier and hostilities began, the Imperial Chancellor at the great session of the Reichstag on August 4th declared, to use his own words:
Necessity knows no law. ”

“ All Germans have the right to form associations or societies for purposes not contrary to the criminal law. This right can not be limited by preventive measures. The same provisions apply to religious associations and societies. ”

“ Powers of Legislation.—By reason of the pivotal position which the Bundesrath occupies in the German constitutional system the functions of the body are fundamental and its powers comprehensive. Its competence is in the main legislative and fiscal, but also in part executive and judicial. By the constitution it is stipulated that the legislative power of the Empire shall be exercised by the Bundesrath and the Reichstag, and that a majority of the votes of both bodies shall be necessary and sufficient for the enactment of a law. ”

“ These occupations and annexations furnished the motive for an extension into many areas outside the old Reich of the draconic and discriminatory German laws which had been put in force within the old Reich. By the act of 14 April 1939, it was provided:
“Article II, section 6 (2) . Persons who are not German nationals are subject to German jurisdiction for offenses—
“ (a) to which German criminal law applies,
“ (b) if they are prosecuted under a private action provided the action has been brought by a German national. ”

“ No German may be extradited for prosecution or punishment by a foreign government.
Article 113. The foreign language parts of the population of the Reich may not be interfered with by legislative or administrative action in their free racial development, especially in the use of their mother tongue in education, as well as in the communal administration and the administration of justice.
Article 114. Liberty of the person is inviolable. A restriction upon, or deprivation of, personal liberty, may not be imposed by public authority except by law. ”

“ After this détour, we are led back to the fact that the Germans possess the greatest freedom yet attained by humanity, for the Prussian political organization most fully exemplifies Law, or the Universal, organizing under and within itself all particular arrangements of social and personal life. Some other peoples—particularly the Latin—have thought they could make constitutions, or at least that the form of their constitution was a matter of choice. ”

“ Can one imagine that in Berlin an Italian or a South American, with very little knowledge of the German language, would be not only entrusted with the management of leading banks and companies, but would be allowed in German clubs to lay down—in their faulty German—the law as to the way in which Germany should be developed? ”

“ The dilemma therefore is inexorable: we can readmit Germany to international society and lower our standard of International Law to her level, or we can exclude her and raise it. There is no third course. ”

“ Organization and Functions of the Reich Section I: The Reich and the States Article 1. The German Reich is a Republic.
The political power emanates from the people.
Article 2. The territory of the Reich consists of the territories of the German states. Other territories may be incorporated in the Reich by a national law, if their populations so desire by virtue of the right of self-determination. ”

“ Every German has the right to emigrate to non-German countries. Emigration may be restricted only by a national law.
All German citizens within and without the boundaries of the Reich have the right of protection by the Reich against foreign countries. ”

“ PREAMBLE Conscious of their responsibility before God and man, Inspired by the determination to promote world peace as an equal partner in a united Europe, the German people, in the exercise of their constituent power, have adopted this Basic Law. Germans in the Länder of Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Berlin, Brandenburg, Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse, Lower Saxony, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein and Thuringia have achieved the unity and freedom of Germany in free self-determination. ”

“ The state treaties concluded by the German Reich concerning matters for which, according to this Basic Law, Land legislation is competent, shall remain in force if they are valid and continue to be valid according to general basic principles of law, while reserving all the rights and objections of those concerned, until new state treaties shall have been concluded by the authorities made competent to do so by this Basic Law or until they are otherwise terminated on the grounds of the provisions they contain. ”

“ The Reich may by law, without prejudicing the right of compensation, and with due application of the provisions in force with regard to expropriation, transfer to public ownership private economic enterprises suitable for socialization. The Reich itself may participate or may cause the states or municipalities to share in the management of economic enterprises and associations, or may in any other manner assure to itself a determining influence therein. ”

“ They have in principle judiciary and administrative services, but in all important respects such as relations with foreign states, military administration, railroads, waterways, posts and telegraphs, their authority has been taken away; the whole domain of financial legislation has also passed to the Reich and they can no longer exist except through subsidies from the Reich.
They have a territorial sovereignty; but a constitutional [73] law, and in certain cases even an ordinary law may modify that territory against their will.
They still have their citizens ”

“ The final text of this law, like that of the text of the Constitution, limits itself to prescribing that every German must be given the opportunity to earn his living by economic labour, that is to say, by labour that produces goods, utilizing to the utmost the available conditions of work. In addition, the compensation to the individual must be sufficient for a livelihood. ”

“ The future of German dynasties, as of German Unity, rests with the German people itself; and those who challenge this statement repudiate ipso facto the two principles of Nationality and International Law, which we have officially adopted as our programme for the future. ”

“ It remains beautiful even if justice does not always reflect its divine origin. We jurists whom fate had condemned to work in the Third Reich—and I am by no means referring only to us who are here, I am referring to all of them—we know what was the matter with the administration of justice in the Third Reich. But in whatever way this administration of justice may have worked, I believe one must view it in connection with the fate of the German people. ”

“ The division of the Reich into states shall serve the highest economic and cultural progress of the people, with due regard to the wishes of the population affected. The alteration of state boundaries and the creation of states within the Reich shall take place by virtue of national law modifying the constitution. ”

“ An ordinary national law shall also suffice where one of the states affected does not consent, but where the alteration of a boundary or the creation of a new state is demanded by the wishes of the population and an overwhelming national interest requires it. ”

“ Of what exactly consists this duty on the part of the State? It is certainly not a legal obligation that gives the individual the right to demand before a tribunal the execution of this promise. It is a promise that the Constitution makes and which it sufficiently fulfils if the Reich institutes a general system to make known all the available possibilities for work. An individual may ask only what kind of work is available and what opportunity there is of securing it. The proposal of the Socialization Law provided that every German shall receive work corresponding to his powers. ”

“ Those doctrines are worked out in careful correspondence with German views of Roman law. And most of the speculative jurists of Germany, from Savigny to Ihering, have been at once professors of Roman law, and profoundly influenced if not controlled by some form of Kantian or post-Kantian philosophy. Thus everything has combined to give a special bent to German speculation, which deprives it of its claim to universal authority.
Why is possession protected by the law, when the possessor is not also an owner? That is the general problem which has much exercised the German mind. ”

“ To secure Germany from being again conquered by France, it was necessary that the members of the League, great and small, should abandon something of their separate sovereignty, and create a central authority with the sole right of making war and alliances. To protect the subjects of the minor princes from the abuse of power, it was necessary that certain definite civil rights and a measure of representative government should be assured by Federal Law to the inhabitants of every German State, and enforced by the central authority on the appeal of subjects against their Sovereigns. ”

“ To what extent do the rules of International Law condemn the individual German for his acts, once war has been declared? He is immune only if he acts within the rules prescribed for warfare. If he commits an act in violation of the laws of war, he is liable to trial and punishment by the courts of the injured adversary. In 1880 the Institute of International Law expressly affirmed this doctrine. ”

“ The following remarks will so far explain the relation of this Government to the new movement:—Hitherto they have maintained the position of strict neutrality. The law of the land guarantees full freedom of conscience to every Prussian citizen; and as the new doctrines involve no principles of danger to the common safety, their defenders are entitled to demand that no police restrictions be put in the way of their progress. The law draws a distinction between religious societies merely tolerated, and those formally acknowledged by the State ”

“ In the provisions for social, not to say socialistic, enterprise, both the Australian and the German constitutions offer noteworthy contrasts to our own fundamental law. It will not escape the close observer that the Germans have not created a supreme court, on the model of our own, endowed with power to set aside acts of the executive and legislative branches of the government. The relations established by the Germans between the federal government and the states, ingenious compromises all must admit, ought to be studied in connection with Mr. ”