CHAPMAN COLEMAN, Second Secretary of Legation to Sargent, September 30, 1882

Mr. Coleman to Mr. Sargent.

Sir: I have the honor to submit herewith, pursuant to your request, a report upon the organization of the courts of law in Germany.

This report is based upon the law of January 27, 1877, organizing the courts of the Empire. This law is the first of a series of four laws, enacted in the months of January and February, 1877, known collectively as the judicial laws, and consisting of the law above referred to, of the code of civil procedure, of that of criminal procedure, and of the bankruptcy code. The codes enumerated and other laws will be treated of in this report only in so far as references in the law under consideration constitute portions of them a part of that law. The entire body of the judicial laws, with the introductory enactments, and those carrying them into effect, constitute a mass of material quite too voluminous and complex for the scope of this report. Other portions of those laws, and especially the code of civil procedure, greatly merit the attention of foreign students, and might perhaps, hereafter, be advantageously made the subject of further reports.

At as early a date as May, 1870, the re-established German Empire could boast of the accomplishment of unification in the penal code; and a codification of civil laws for the empire has long been under preparation in the hands of the most eminent jurists of the country, and will, in a few years, have been completed, and a result have been attained that may well be regarded as grand, in view of the diversity of systems pre-existing in the various states constituting the present empire, and also in view of the youth of the empire.

I am assured by Baron von Diepenbroick Grüter, a judge of high authority, until recently a member of the court of supreme jurisdiction in this kingdom, and a gentleman to whom I am indebted for many valuable suggestions bearing upon the subject of this report, that most marked benefits have already resulted from this unification, in the avoidance of interstate conflicts of law-evils sufficiently to be deplored in our own country, arising out of the divers systems. Salutary results had also ensued from new features, from improvements, embodied in the new system, into which a new spirit seemed to have been infused since unification.

Trusting the foregoing introductory remarks upon the German judicial laws in general may not have been inappropriate in connection with this report, I shall hereinafter confine myself to the discussion of the organization of the German courts, of the regular, ordinary machinery for the administration of justice in this country.

There is a number of other courts provided for by imperial legislation—courts of peculiar, limited jurisdiction—which will receive no further consideration here. I shall, however, in a final chapter, endeavor to present the leading features of a system of arbitration provided for by the code of civil procedure, for the purpose of compromising contentions, and thereby avoiding recourse to the courts of law.

I have, &c.,