“Hamburg Guidelines” now available in English
The Institute first published the Hamburger Leitlinien für die Ermittlung und Anwendung ausländischen Rechts in deutschen Verfahren in 2023. This guide is now available in English as the Hamburg Guidelines for Ascertaining and Applying Foreign Law in German Litigation (the Hamburg Guidelines). Along with the English edition, the Institute has also issued a revised German edition of the guidelines. Both versions are available in print and online, free of charge.
In cross-border cases, German courts often have to apply foreign law. But before doing so, judges must determine its content, using the tools available to them. One of the options is to commission an expert opinion on the content of the foreign law. The process of obtaining an expert opinion on foreign law raises many legal and practical issues that cannot be fully resolved by consulting statutes or case law.
German courts regularly task the Institute with preparing expert opinions on the law of many of the world’s approximately 200 jurisdictions. The Hamburg Guidelines serve as a guide to that process for courts, experts, counsel, and the parties to litigation. The guidelines were drafted after extensive consultations with the Institute’s own scholars, external academics, judges, attorneys, and other practitioners. They also mark a milestone in a research project led by Ralf Michaels, director at the Institute, and Jan Peter Schmidt, the head of the Centre for the Application of Foreign Law.
The Hamburg Guidelines for Ascertaining and Applying Foreign Law in German Litigation are available as a booklet in English or German and online www.hamburg-guidelines.de, all free of charge.
Image: © Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law / Johanna Detering