Appreciation jurisprudence

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Appreciation jurisprudence describes a series of decisions that were made by the German Reich Court during the inflation after the First World War .

background

As a result of the lost war, especially in 1922 and 1923, hyperinflation occurred in the German Reich , which led to a considerable reduction in the purchasing power of the mark ( German inflation 1914 to 1923 ). This made an adjustment of debts that came from the time before inflation necessary, since otherwise debtors would have been able to repay their old debts with almost worthless money and so the creditors of these debts would have been cheated of the original value of their claims . A legal reaction to this was not to be expected, since the state, the German Reich , itself benefited from the situation as the debtor of the war bonds .

Imperial Court

The Reichsgericht , at that time the highest court in Germany, responded on November 28, 1923 (in a case in which a creditor as the plaintiff demanded that his debtor as the defendant pay a mortgage for a property in the former South West Africa with gold marks instead of paper marks ) a decision which says: “The legislature did not have to consider a substantial devaluation of paper money, especially such a high one, as it has become more and more a reality after the unfortunate outcome of the World War and after the overthrow thought. "

From this, the Reichsgericht derived the power to adjust the numerical amount of a debt to the changed monetary value even without a corresponding clause in the contract, i.e. H. "Upgrade". This was historically remarkable, since the positivist view of the law at the time assumed that legal training was a matter for the legislature , but not for the courts . The jurisprudence developed into the institute of the discontinuation of the business basis , which has meanwhile been codified in the BGB ( § 313 ) , however, in the absence of other options, the Reichsgericht chose § 242 ( good faith ) as the starting point for this jurisdiction.

Conflict with the legislature

Since this jurisprudence ran counter to the interests of the state, rumors arose about an imminent legal regulation. The board of directors of the judges' association opposed this by declaring on January 8, 1924 that if the legislature should overturn the decision of the Reichsgericht, the court would refuse to obey the legislature and not apply the law - an unheard-of process according to the positivist understanding of the time. The President of the Reichsgericht, like other judges, distanced himself from this declaration. But when the legislature wanted to regulate the question of revaluation first by ordinance and later by law, the Reichsgericht examined the legality and thus validity of the legal norms in two judgments . This was justified as follows:

"Since the Reich Constitution itself does not contain any provision according to which the decision on the constitutionality of the Reich laws would be withdrawn from the courts and transferred to a certain other body, the right and the duty of the judge to review the constitutionality of Reich laws must be recognized."

Aftermath

At that time, German law (unlike US law, see the groundbreaking Marbury v. Madison decision ) did not have the power of courts to review a law for constitutionality and, if necessary, to reject it. The Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany assigns this power to the Federal Constitutional Court . In addition to its civil law significance, the revaluation jurisprudence can also be seen as a forerunner of modern German constitutional jurisdiction.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dieter Grimm , NJW 1997, p. 2724.
  2. ↑ RGZ 107, 78.
  3. ↑ Hillgruber, in: Maunz / Dürig, Commentary on the Basic Law, 57th edition 2010, Art. 97 No. 65.
  4. ^ Dieter Medicus , Bürgerliches Recht, 20th edition 2004, no. 152.
  5. ↑ Critical to this, for example, Bernd Rüthers , Die Unlimited Interpretation , 6th edition 2005, pp. 69 ff., 86 ff.
  6. ↑ Deutsche Richterzeitung 1924, column 7f.
  7. ↑ Simons, Deutsche Richterzeitung 1924, column 424; more clearly for example Matthiesen, Deutsche Richterzeitung 1924, column 41f.
  8. ↑ RGZ 107, 370 for the ordinance; RGZ 111, 320 for the law.
  9. ↑ Dieter Grimm, NJW 1997, p. 2725.