General state laws for the Prussian states

The General Land Law for the Prussian States (ALR ) was a codification, which was developed under Frederick the Great and Frederick William II of the jurists Svarez and small under the auspices of the Prussian chancellor Johann Heinrich von Carmer and adopted in 1794. It was the first and only to date modern attempt at a comprehensive and coherent codification of civil law, criminal law and other parts of the public law in a single statute book.

Genesis

The roots of the ALR go back to the considerations of Frederick I, a uniform law to create. This fundamental reform, however, was only given by Frederick II the Great commissioned and first implemented by the Grand Chancellor Samuel Cocceji. This experiment Cocceji, the so-called Project a Corporis Juris Fridericiani (1749/1751), but was unsuccessful.

Relevant issues for the future development of the land law was the wish of Frederick II according to a clear and unambiguous legal. Frederick was deeply influenced by the miller Arnold case and took this as an opportunity for a comprehensive judicial and legal reform. In particular, the power of lawyers should be limited by a very precise legal wording.

First, Frederick had a commentary prohibition ( prohibition analogy ) has the goal to end the abuse of rights of lawyers. Only the sense of the word could be interpreted. When in doubt, a dedicated Commission has been questioned, however, had to be abolished, since the frequent requests paralyzed the judiciary.

The ALR should now make everyone's right in an intelligible form " nachlesbar ".

With Cabinet Order of April 14, 1780 Grand Chancellor Johann Heinrich was commissioned by Carmer with the preparation, entrusted the work on the body of laws according to the will of the king several people. Decisive is the work of Carl Gottlieb Svarez ( civil law ) and Ernst Ferdinand Klein ( Criminal) in the draft struck down.

The ALR was first completed in 1792 as "the General Code of the Prussian States " (GTC). In the wake of the events of the French Revolution was a further revision, in which the reactionary and conservative elites were able to impose their concerns against the free basic trend of the law in Prussia: Many liberal and rational legal provisions have been removed or restricted ( so that welfare as a state purpose). The law came by just under Frederick's successor, Frederick William II on 1 June 1794 in force.

Scope

The ALR replaced subsidiary force different legal sources, such as the Roman law and the law of Saxony. It also was only a subsidiary, ie it was only used when the local legal sources met no control. It therefore did not provide a comprehensive legal entity in the country. It only sat a comprehensive and integrated legislation for areas without their own traditional legal sources, particularly in the former Polish provinces ( with the exception of the cities that often possessed here have their own sources of law ). In the now Prussian after the Congress of Vienna in 1814 Rhine Province was not for the ALR, but the Germanized Civil Code, which in the liberal bourgeoisie because of its liberal spirit as equality before the law, property rights, contract and testamentary freedom, trial by jury a favorite enjoyed.

Content

The ALR regulated, as far as it was intended at this time all areas of law, the general civil law, family and estate law, feudal law, estates law, municipal law, state law, canon law, police law, criminal law and penal law in over 19,000 rules. Every possible case should be precisely controlled.

Appreciation

Legal policy, the introduction of the ALR was a step forward, even if the feudal caste system in the 19th century was no longer appropriate and becoming the country's economic development slowed (see emancipation and bondage ). In particular, the primacy of natural law in the Roman law was a major advance. Even legal policy principles nullum crimen sine lege, or as that of the State must be engaged right to demonstrate to the citizens, were new.

In particular, the design of the ALR reflected a changed conception of the state of state and law, which had its origins in the political thought of Friedrich II. However, the law did not intend a constitutional limitation of the monarchy, but did no more than a commitment to self- restrictive, and this was attenuated by the revision to the ALR. Thus the prohibition of power sayings of the king was to put up with the aim of despotism of the sovereign borders, no longer included in the ALR, even though it had just gone to a dictum of the king in case the miller Arnold.

The rights of the nobility were further consolidated and maintained the existing social order as the compulsory guild. This conserved the ALR in the economy of existing claims and slowed the development of a more bourgeois political system.

Modern action

In today's law, the General Land Law hardly plays a role because of the comprehensive codification of private law in the Civil Code. Legally individual country rules will continue to apply until today. For example, the LG Neubrandenburg decided in 2011 that the neighbor law provisions of the general land laws are still applicable in parts of Pomerania.

However, § § 74, 75 of the introduction to the ALR be used as a nationwide applicable common law judge in his legal expression today. The regulations contain the sacrifice thoughts and allow a claim for compensation against the State in

• Rightful sovereign intervention in the property, which lead to a particular load ( which robbed intervention);
• Unlawful interference with sovereign ownership ( confiscatory intervention);
• Sovereign interventions in other constitutionally protected rights ( life, health, physical integrity and freedom ), which lead to a particular strain and provided no special legal rules exist.

" Individual rights and benefits of members of the State to the rights and obligations for the transport of the Community interest when entering a real contradiction between the two (collision ), inferior. "

" On the other hand, the state is those which its special rights and advantages compelled to sacrifice the welfare of the commonwealth, is held to compensate. "