Updated by Katherine Read, September 2025
This guide was created by Katherine Read, Principal Library Assistant at the IALS Library.
Email katherine.read@sas.ac.uk
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We'd love to hear your comments about this Research Guide.
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We also recommend the following online research guides for foreign jurisdictions.
The Institute Library has substantial collections of the law of the countries of Western Europe, and Germany is well represented. The legal system is more complicated than that of France, in that Germany is a Federal Republic, and there are legislatures for each of the states (Länder). The number of these increased from eleven to sixteen on reunification with the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) in October 1990. As will be seen, the collections are mainly confined to federal law. Although we do have a small collection of older GDR material, it is not discussed here.
Where appropriate, Internet sources are given at the end of the relevant section. Fuller details of these sources can be found by using the Eagle-i search engine.
IALS holds an unbroken run of the older Reichsgesetzblatt from 1899 to 1945. This is held in the closed basement.
Its successor, the Bundesgesetzblatt, is published in two parts, Teil I containing laws and ministerial orders, and Teil II international agreements. There is a good annual cumulative index or Fundstellennachweis to each part. The printed volumes are not held at IALS but there is now free public access online to the Bundesgesetzblatt with the Fundstellennachweis. Coverage starts in 1949 but this does not allow any printing, text searching or downloading. An enhanced paid subscription service is available but IALS does not subscribe to this.
Our main source for up to date texts of the Codes is Beck Online, which can be accessed on site from the A-Z of Databases. It includes comprehensive access to legislation in force (including Sartorius Plus and Habersack Plus), and Das Deutsche Bundesrecht (NOMOS).
Sartorius Plus covers constitutional and administrative statutes, international agreements and European law.
Habersack Plus (formerly known as Schönfelder Plus) is a collection of German Statutes on civil, criminal and procedural law
IALS also has the current edition of Staudinger - BGB (Juris)
HeinOnline's World Constitutions Illustrated provides full text access to the current and historic versions of the German Constitution in English. This includes the Constitutions of the previous GDR and the German Reich. It is accompanied by references to a selection of historical commentaries and articles, many of which are in full text, and links to further internet sources. Offsite access to Hein is available to IALS and UOL staff and registered students.
Free Internet/Electronic Sources of legislation
Similar to other Civil law jurisdictions, it is not usually possible to search for German cases by party names. Further details relating to the subject area, date of the decision and the type of Court are required. Judgments are usually only available in German.
The Institute possesses an extensive collection of German law reports, totalling 42 titles of which eight are current. These include the official reports of decisions of the Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof) in both civil and criminal cases (BGHZ and BGHSt), and those of the Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) (BVerfGE). Other series are devoted to special courts.
In addition to series of law reports in the usual sense, decisions also appear in both general and specialized legal periodicals. Among the former are Neue Juristische Wochenschrift and Monatsschrift für deutsches Recht , and the latter Gewerblicher Rechtsschutz und Urheberrecht (intellectual property), Die Offentliche Verwaltung (public administrative law) and Die Aktiengesellschaft (company law). Neue Justiz , focuses on the development of law and administration of justice in the new federal Länder, which were originally East Germany prior to reunification.
A sample case reference from one of these journals is BVerfG, NJW 2014, 1581. The case was heard in the German Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht - BVerfG) and reported in Neue Juristische Wochenschrift (NJW) in 2014 (page 1581).
Some of the journal sources of law reports are also available electronically on BeckOnline. Please refer to the main section on Journals for full details of the titles covered.
Online Sources of German case law
The following sites either give full text reports/press releases of recent cases or refer users to other specific sites to obtain these reports. They also provide background information about the courts.
IALS Library holds a wide selection of German legal sources. A separate section of this guide considers English language sources.
Major commentaries
Shorter commentaries
The series of Kurz-Kommentare (short commentaries), published by Beck, reproduce the text of each section of a statute in bold type, followed by commentary and reference to literature and case law. IALS currently holds a wide selection of titles, many of which have been updated recently. These works are more substantial than the series title might suggest. Recent publications in this series and other titles held at IALS include:
Open access books
The following printed titles are on current subscription. The list excludes international and comparative law journals.
Electronic Subscriptions
Beck online provides full text access to two collections of German online journals, Neue Juristische Wochenschrift Group and Gewerblicher Rechtsschutz Plus. More information about the details of the journal titles are included on our A-Z of Law Databases. Click on the 'More Information' button.
Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals (part of Hein) allows searching of articles from Civil law jurisdictions including Germany. It can be searched using keywords in English or German. It does not provide full text access but some of the printed journals are held at IALS. It can be accessed onsite at IALS and offsite by UOL/SAS staff/students.
Open Access Journals
A good introduction is provided by:
The Civil, Commercial and Criminal Codes have all been issued in translation, see details:
The Hauser Globalex site provides English language guides to a wide range of jurisdictions and subject areas covering foreign, international and comparative legal research and tools for building research collections in these areas.
Sebastian Omlor Guide to translations of German business and commercial laws (2022)
Sebastian Omlor Legal research in Germany between print and electronic media(2022)
The German Law Journal is an English language full text journal which focuses on foreign, European and Civil law systems. It started in 2000.
Virtuelle Fachbibliothek Recht (Virtual Law Library). This is a gateway to a wide variety of freely available legal internet sources. The background to the project is explained in English but the documents are mainly in German. It also gives access to the catalogues of the State Library of Berlin.
Böttcher & Kirchner: Abkürzungsverzeichnis der Rechtssprache 8th ed. rev. 2015
This gives an alphabetical listing of abbreviations and also arranges them in separate lists under the headings of Official Publications, Journals/Law Reports and Primary/Subsidiary Legislation.