German Code Of Criminal Procedure

Goes beyond a mere literal translation of the code of criminal procedure by supplying the reader with relevant provisions of the German Constitution and from the Court of Organization Law. In addition, numerous comments to individual sections have been added by the translator.

English summary: This textbook is a thorough and detailed presentation of German Criminal Procedure Law. It follows a systematic structure, but to a great extent it is based on cases or illustrated by examples. German description: This textbook is a thorough and detailed presentation of German Criminal Procedure Law. It has a truly systematic structure, but to a great extent it is based on cases or illustrated by examples. Das Lehrbuch ist eine grundliche und detaillierte Darstellung des deutschen Strafverfahrensrechts, die streng systematisch aufgebaut ist, aber weitgehend anhand von Fallen und Beispielen erfolgt.

The new edition of this seminal text outlines the fundamental aspects of the German approach to criminal procedure. It explores a wide range of issues from setting out the basic procedural principles to presenting the main players in the criminal justice system, pre-trial investigations, the path from indictment to trial judgment, rules of evidence, sentencing, and appeals and post-conviction review. As far as it is useful for an introductory text, the differences between proceedings against adults and juveniles are highlighted. The theoretical discussion of decision-making and style of judgment writing is supported by practical insights through specimen translations of an indictment, a trial judgment and an appellate judgment by the Federal Court of Justice.

The German Criminal Code (Reichsstrafgesetzbuch) was ratified by the newly-formed German Empire on 16 April 1871. It is a remarkable work of synthesis drawn mostly from the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina (1532), the Code Napoleon (1804), Feuerbach's Bavarian Criminal Code (1813) and the Prussian Penal Code (1851), which was influenced by the Code Napoleon. Its value lay not just in its establishment of uniform federal law but, as Drage notes in his excellent commentary, in its catholicity of historical and contemporary sources. Drawing on the idea of German unity, underscored in this case by the consensus-forming might of Prussian arms, the criminal code remained in force, despite various efforts at reform, until the triumph of National Socialism.