Abstract
One cannot understand the institutional mission of the German prosecution service without situating the creation of the service within the development of Germany’s civil law tradition. That tradition nurtured and shaped the institution’s birth and purpose. Furthermore, unless we understand the role that law plays within the civil law world view, we cannot fully appreciate the depth and significance of scholars’ present concerns about the prosecution service. Indeed, the current allegations that charge prosecutors with abandoning their search for the material truth in pursuit of efficiency, not only threaten the service’s reputation, they also threaten the foundational pillars of Germany’s civil law tradition.
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Notes
- 1.
“The Common and Civil Law Traditions,” The Robbins Religious and Civil Law Collection. p. 1. Available online at http://www.law.berkeley.edu/library/robbins/CommonLawCivilLawTraditions.html. Accessed on 24 July 2013.
- 2.
§152(2) StPO.
- 3.
§296 StPO.
- 4.
The Civil and Common Law Traditions, supra n 1, at 2.
- 5.
§152 Nr. 2 StGB.
- 6.
Prosecutors even possess the power to petition the court for an acquittal at the conclusion of a trial if they are not convinced that the evidence is legally sufficient to meet the standard of guilt. A prosecutor may also file an appeal on behalf of the accused. See §296 (2) StPO.
References
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Legislation
Legislation
German Code of Criminal Procedure (StPO)
Sections: 152(2), 152 Nr. 2, 296, 296(2)
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Boyne, S.M. (2014). The Normative Vision of the Prosecution Service. In: The German Prosecution Service. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40928-8_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40928-8_2
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