Fristen. German procedure runs on prescribed periods — to respond, to object, to appeal — and they are counted in weeks. The clock is generous and it is strict. Nobody is asked to reply immediately, and nobody is permitted to reply late.
law
Police discretion
An American officer may issue a warning instead of a citation, and the choice is routine, expected, and mostly unrecorded. The law is written in absolutes. Its application is not.
The land register
Das Grundbuch. The German land register records, for every parcel, the owner, the boundaries, the mortgages, the easements and the restrictions — maintained by the courts and legally authoritative. What is written there is what is true. The register is not evidence of the position. It is the position.
Co-determination
Mitbestimmung. German law gives employees seats on the supervisory boards of large companies — half the seats in firms over two thousand employees. The structure assumes that an outcome reached without one side represented is not a legitimate outcome, and builds that into company law.
Evidence before the lawsuit
Das selbständige Beweisverfahren. German law allows a party to have evidence formally secured and examined by a court-appointed expert before any lawsuit is filed, particularly in construction disputes. The investigation can precede the conflict, and frequently ends it.
The reasonable person
American negligence law measures conduct against what a reasonable person would have done in the circumstances. The standard is deliberately not a rule. It is a judgment, made afterwards, by a jury, about what judgment should have been made at the time.
COBRA
American health insurance is usually tied to the job, and federal law allows a departing employee to continue the employer’s plan — at the full unsubsidised cost, which is typically several times what they were paying. The bridge exists and it is expensive.
The documentation duty
German law requires documentation of the process in regulated fields — pharmaceutical manufacture, medical devices, food production, construction. What was done, by whom, when, to which specification. The record is not evidence that the work was done properly. In German regulatory logic, an undocumented step was not properly done.
The principle of equivalence
Das Äquivalenzprinzip. The principle of equivalence — that what each side gives should correspond to what each side receives. It is not an aspiration in German law. It is a working concept that courts apply, and a disturbed equivalence is a ground for intervention.
Prosecutorial discretion
An American prosecutor decides whether to bring charges, which charges, and whether to offer a plea — and the decision is largely unreviewable. The statute says what is illegal. A person decides what is prosecuted.