Arbitration Commission (GDR)
Arbitration commissions (abbreviated SchK ) counted in the system of the GDR judiciary alongside the conflict commissions and in contrast to state jurisdiction to the so-called social courts of the “socialist administration of justice”.
The arbitration commissions were formed in 1964 on the model of the conflict commissions and replaced the atonement bodies created in 1953. The constitution of the German Democratic Republic of 1968 regulated in Article 92:
"In the German Democratic Republic, jurisdiction is exercised by the Supreme Court, the district courts, the district courts and the social courts within the framework of the tasks assigned to them by law."
In implementation of this constitutional regulation, the law on social courts was enacted with effect from July 1, 1968 .
Arbitration commissions were formed in the residential areas of the cities and in municipalities as well as in agricultural production cooperatives and the production cooperatives of fishermen, gardeners and craftsmen. Several arbitration commissions were formed in larger communities. The number of arbitration commissions ranged from five to six thousand.
The members of the arbitration commissions were not trained judges and lawyers, but always lay judges , similar to lay judges , who, however, had to attend regular training courses and instructions on the "correct" interpretation and application of "socialist law". An arbitration commission consisted of 8 to 15 members (but there were also arbitration commissions with only 6 or up to 20 members). The members had a term of office of two years until 1968 and four years thereafter.
The competences of the arbitration commissions were mainly in subordinate civil law disputes (with a value in dispute of up to around 500 GDR marks ) and petty crime ( offenses and misconduct) with a local reference.
The decisions of the arbitration committees became legally binding, similar to a court judgment. However, it was possible to appeal against these decisions within a legally stipulated period of time at the locally competent district court . Here this decision of the arbitration commission was then reviewed by a professional judge (possibly with 2 lay judges), renegotiated and either repealed or confirmed.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall , the arbitration commissions were also included in the process of reintroducing a constitutional state . The dominant influence of the SED, renamed PDS , on the arbitration commissions ended. The first freely elected People's Chamber she walked with the "Law on the difference in the communes" of 13 September 1990 in arbitration order.
Procedural statistics
| 1959 a | 1969 | 1979 | 1989 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Offense | 55,866 | 87.9% | 7.151 | 24.1% | 5,054 | 26.4% | 4,870 | 30.3% |
| Misconduct | 14,498 | 48.8% | 7,899 | 41.3% | 6,052 | 37.7% | ||
| Administrative offenses | 365 | 1.2% | 266 | 1.4% | 564 | 3.5% | ||
| School violations | 467 | 1.6% | 555 | 2.9% | 267 | 1.7% | ||
| civil right | 7,680 | 12.1% | 6,845 | 23.0% | 5,286 | 27.7% | 4,315 | 26.9% |
| Work-shy behavior b | 375 | 1.3% | 57 | 0.3% | ||||
| total | 63,546 | 29,701 | 19,117 | 16,068 | ||||
literature
- Werner Reiland: The social courts of the GDR, 1971, dissertation . Erdmann, Tübingen / Basel 1971, ISBN 3-7711-0949-3
- Hans-Andreas Schönfeldt: From Arbitrator to Arbitration Commission: Enforcement of Norms by Territorial Social Courts in the GDR, Studies on European Legal History, Volume 145, 2002, ISBN 3465031768
Individual evidence
- ↑ Abbreviations from the holdings of the parties and mass organizations of the GDR SED and FDGB archives in the Federal Archives , accessed on February 18, 2016
- ↑ Guideline of the Council of State of the German Democratic Republic on the formation and activities of arbitration commissions of August 21, 1964 ( Journal of Laws of I No. 9 p. 115 )
- ↑ cf. Order on the establishment of atonement bodies in the German Democratic Republic (Arbitration Rules) of April 24, 1953 ( Journal of Laws of No. 59 p. 647 )
- ^ Text of the GDR Constitution 1968
- ^ Law on the social courts of the German Democratic Republic of June 11, 1968
- ↑ Britta Schubel: History and the present of extrajudicial settlement of criminal cases by voluntary arbitration bodies in the new federal states (1997), p. 316 f.