Magistrate's court
In the Anglo-Saxon area , the Justice of the Peace is an instance of the lower level of jurisdiction staffed by lay judges to maintain social peace in disputes of low value. The justice of the peace is generally a locally elected office.
In German-speaking countries outside of Germany , the name Friedensgericht is used for a lower instance of jurisdiction similar to the German district court . The facility exists in the two eastern cantons of Belgium , in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and, since 1995, in South Tyrol - each with different responsibilities.
A distinction must be made between the court of justice and the arbitrator , who in the German state of Saxony ( Section 3 SächsSchiedsGütStG) and in several Swiss cantons is called a magistrate of the peace (in other cantons, a mediator ).
Historical name
Peace courts serve or served in various societies to arbitrate legal disputes and were responsible for less important civil and minor criminal matters.
England
In England were a magistrate (justice of the peace, in short: JP) in the 14th century by King Edward III. introduced. They functioned as a local organ of self-government, had to maintain the common peace under royal authority and were made up of volunteer laypeople without legal training who were instructed and advised by legal clerks. They were responsible for exercising the bulk of the jurisdiction in minor criminal matters and less important marital disputes. In the further civil and criminal matters they had to prepare the decisions of the chief judges at the courts. With the British emigrants, the courts of peace reached North America and Australia in particular, where they still exist today.
France
France introduced the justice de paix (justice de paix) in 1790. Here, too, an essential feature was that the justices of the peace were legal laypeople who, however, enjoyed a general reputation and were therefore able to settle small legal disputes in large numbers due to their closeness to the people. Before an action could be brought before an ordinary court , a conciliatory negotiation had to take place before the magistrate's court ( process requirement ). In less important civil law disputes, the justice of the peace, who usually had their official seat in their private home, also exercised the office of civil judge. They did so partly in the first, partly in the first and last instance . In the non-contentious (voluntary) jurisdiction , they chaired the family council in guardianship matters and were responsible for inheritance matters and civil status matters in the event of marriages, births, deaths, etc. The justices of the peace also acted as simple police judges in the event of violations and could impose fines of up to 15 francs or five days Recognize imprisonment. In the case of the crimes committed in their district, they were assigned to investigate the case by the examining magistrates of the higher courts. In 1958 the peace court was replaced by the "tribunal d'instance" (district court).
Germany
After the first coalition war , the French courts of peace came to Germany with the French occupiers of the German areas on the left bank of the Rhine in 1797. Napoleon I also introduced the French code of law, the Civil Code, there in 1804 , which separated the administration and jurisdiction that had been linked up to that point and installed independent judges.
In the Kingdom of Westphalia (1807–1813) on the right bank of the Rhine , the courts of justice were introduced as the lowest level of the cantons , see the judiciary in the Kingdom of Westphalia .
When, after the fall of Napoleon I, the areas on the left bank of the Rhine came to Prussia , Bavaria and Hesse in 1815 , the French peace courts remained because they were perceived as an advance over the old legal systems. It was not until 1879 that the courts of justice were replaced by the local courts due to the new Courts Constitution Act in force in the German Reich .
In the post-war period there were peace courts in Württemberg-Baden . They were responsible "for criminal matters up to 150 marks or 6 weeks imprisonment, for property disputes up to 150 marks and for private lawsuits (insults, defamation and defamation)". The corresponding law was declared null and void by the Federal Constitutional Court in 1959 because of a violation of the right to a legal judge and in 1960 it was replaced by the Baden-Württemberg law on municipal jurisdiction.
literature
- Meyers Konversationslexikon . 4th edition. Volume 6, Verlag des Bibliografisches Institut, Leipzig 1889, pp. 688f.
- Bernhard Rehfeldt: Introduction to Law. 2nd Edition. Walter de Gruyter & Co, Berlin 1966, p. 246 ff.
- Peter Schnyder: The justice of the peace in Swiss civil procedure law. Dissertation . Zurich 1985.
- Ulrich Eisenhardt: German legal history. 4th edition. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-51996-2 , marginal note 443 ff.
- Martin Zwickel: Citizen-friendly civil justice: the French juridiction de proximité from a German perspective . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-16-150457-0 , p. 70–73 on Württemberg-Baden ( limited preview in Google book search).
- Dominik Nagl: No Part of the Mother Country, but Distinct Dominions Legal Transfer, State Building and Governance in England, Massachusetts and South Carolina, 1630–1769. LIT, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-643-11817-2 , p. 109ff. de.scribd.com
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Law No. 241 on Peace Justice of March 29, 1949 ( Reg.Bl, p. 47. ); see. Law for the Restoration of Legal Unity of September 12, 1950, Art. 8 II No. 93 ( Federal Law Gazette p. 455, 509 )
- ↑ The Park Trap . In: Der Spiegel . No. 29 , 1954 ( online ).
- ↑ BVerfGE 10, 200