Foreign Legal Information Act
| Basic data | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Law implementing the European Convention on Information on Foreign Law and its Additional Protocol |
| Short title: | Foreign Legal Information Act |
| Abbreviation: | ORDER |
| Type: | Federal law |
| Scope: | Federal Republic of Germany |
| Legal matter: | State and constitutional law, administration of justice |
| References : | 187-3 |
| Issued on: | July 5, 1974 ( BGBl. 1974 I p. 1433 ) |
| Entry into force on: | March 19, 1975 |
| Last change by: |
Art. 15 V of August 31, 2015 ( BGBl. 2015 I p. 1474 ) |
| Effective date of the last change: |
September 8, 2015 Art. 627 Paragraph 1 V of August 31, 2015 |
| Weblink: | ORDER |
| Please note the note on the applicable legal version. | |
The law for the implementation of the European Convention on Information on Foreign Law and its Additional Protocol (Auslands-Rechtsauskunftgesetz - AuRAG) implements in Germany the international legal obligation from the European Convention on Information on Foreign Law and its Additional Protocol.
Information about foreign law is e.g. B. needed in legal proceedings. According to Section 293 of the German Code of Civil Procedure , the court is not limited to the evidence provided by the parties when determining foreign legal norms; it can also use other sources of knowledge and arrange what is necessary. The procedure under the European Convention can be used for this purpose.
According to this, each contracting party must set up or designate a receiving agency that accepts requests for information from another contracting party (Art. 2), which it replies or forwards the request to another state or public body for an answer (Art. 6). In addition, each contracting party can set up or designate one or more transmission agencies that receive requests for information from their courts and transmit them to the competent foreign receiving agency (Art. 2, Paragraph 2). The task of the transmitting agency can also be assigned to the receiving agency.
According to Article 7 of the Convention, the purpose of the reply is to inform the requesting court in an objective and impartial manner about the law of the requested State.
Jurisdiction
In Germany, the Federal Ministry of Justice is the receiving agency (Section 9 (1) AuRAG) as well as the transmission agency for requests made by the Federal Constitutional Court or the federal courts. For other requests, the agencies designated by the state governments perform the tasks of the transmission agencies. In most countries these are the respective highest national judicial authorities; in Hessen the President of the OLG Frankfurt a. M. , in Saxony the president of the OLG Dresden .
