Commercial law

The economic law is the totality of all private law , criminal law and public legal standards and measures with which the state of the legal relationship which acts to economic partners to each other and in relation to the state, and is the generic term for the right of economic transactions and the legal basis of the Economic policy .

Business law includes:

At the international level, the economy is regulated by international business law.

Business law in Germany

Economic constitutional law

In principle, the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany (GG) does not provide for any expressly specific economic form for the Federal Republic of Germany.

Art. 15 GG in principle even enables the socialization of certain primeval goods, but only in return for appropriate compensation. Article 15 of the Basic Lawwas incorporated into the Basic Lawat the instigation of the SPD representatives in the Parliamentary Council , in particular Carlo Schmid . Its significance and its relationship to the guarantee of property have already been controversial in the Council and its formulation reflects this. Art. 15 GG remained without application in the entire post-war history and waslargely forgotten, especially after the SPD had madean ideological changein the Godesberg program . In recent times, the party Die Linke in particularhas increased the public's awareness of Article 15 of the Basic Law.

According to the Federal Constitutional Court , the Basic Law is economically neutral. The economic constitution is, however , given a framework by the constitutional principles of the rule of law and the welfare state , fundamental rights and democracy. The view that the Basic Law goes further and prescribes the economic constitution of the social market economy (so still Hans Carl Nipperdey ) has not been able to prevail. On the other hand, it is questionable to what extent a classic socialist economic model could be combined with the requirements of fundamental rights (in particular property guarantee and freedom of occupation ).

Concrete constitutional requirements for economic life contain the following provisions of the Basic Law: Art. 2 (Economic activity as an expression of free personal development ), Art. 9 (especially para. 3, freedom of association ), Art. 12 (freedom of occupation), Art. 14 (guarantee of property), Art. 74 No. 11 (legislative competence of the Federation for economic law) and Art. 109 Paragraph 1 (budgetary autonomy of the Federation and the Länder).

Economic administrative law

The state influences economic life in a variety of ways. According to the principle of the legal reservation, he basically requires a legal authorization for this. Depending on whether state influence sets limits to the actions of economic operators or wants to promote them, administrative action is divided into intervention and performance management .

The intervention management is historically older and in the 19th century consisted mainly of the classic " trade law ", as a special right to avert danger . Today this also includes antitrust law and merger control for the purpose of monopoly control and limitation of the market power of companies, as well as numerous laws for regulation in certain so-called “regulated” economic areas (such as financial services, energy supply, transport).

Modern commercial administrative law is present in almost every area of economic life and is correspondingly broad and specialized. It also includes forms of performance management, u. a. the subsidy law (business development through the provision of state funding or other benefits) and other statutory regulations for the management of the economy.

Private business law

The concept of commercial private law is not fixed by law. There is no overall codification of private business law, nor has the legislature used this term so far. The term is mainly used in teaching practice, especially at universities of applied sciences, and has been incorporated into the relevant legal literature. It mainly affects that part of private law that is of particular importance for the study of business administration .

The private commercial law determines the rules of the exchange of goods and services on the market between producers, traders and consumers on the one hand and among companies on the other hand, which are mainly determined by the regulations in the civil code and commercial law ( HGB , GmbHG , AktG , GenG ) and others. In addition to these regulations, the provisions of commercial legal protection ( copyright , trademark law , patent law , design law , etc.) should also be mentioned.

European business law is also playing an increasingly important role in the EU countries. Particularly in the area of consumer protection law , there has been a major overhaul of national law by European law . Initiatives to create an (optional) European contract law are currently being discussed in the European Commission .

Commercial criminal law

While the importance of criminal law in connection with economic activity has for decades been limited to individual cases of classic crime, such as fraud or embezzlement , the public prosecutor's offices have increasingly focused on the manufacturing industry in connection with the development of environmental criminal law. Since the nineties, the actual entrepreneurial decision-making process for criminal judicial review has also been opened up through the expanded interpretation of the infidelity section of the Criminal Code (StGB). The Mannesmann ruling of the Federal Court of Justice was particularly groundbreaking . In addition, there is an ever-expanding secondary criminal law , which meanwhile hardly leaves any industry untouched, and far-reaching criminal provisions, for example in the Temporary Employment Act and in export control law .

Business law as a degree

Business law also describes a course of study at technical colleges and universities.

Magazines

literature

Overall presentation

Volker Mayer: Business Law . tape 1 : Legal business doctrine, obligations, commercial transactions . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2015, ISBN 978-3-17-030513-7 .
Volker Mayer, Hans Haarmeyer, Christoph Hillebrand: Business Law . tape 2 : Property law, insolvency law, international private law . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2016, ISBN 978-3-17-030709-4 .