this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2026
1255 points (99.4% liked)
Technology
85297 readers
3983 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I don't know how the German appeals system works, but there is a lot of room for difference.
A particular reading spree once caused me to learn that the UK, a modern civilized country, didn't have what we would call a supreme court until 2009.
Their laws aren't codified. We have a big book o' laws, and we pass bills that modify the book. If it's not in the book it's not a law. They pass bills that are the laws. This sounds really similar until you consider that "the law" is a collection of every act of parliament going back nearly a thousand years, many of which cancel out others. Oh, and that extends to the concept of a "constitution".
Some quick searching shows that Germany uses a fundamentally different legal model that views our big book o' laws as unstructured because courts have a binding say in interpretation of the law. It seems that this regional court can be appealed, and also that their courts don't use precedent like ours do, so an appeal is more like a second opinion than an escalation.
Judges are less referee and more investigator, so you can claim that the judge made a mistake with their decision, which is appeal.
Oh and the US and UK share what is called "common law" system as well in which decision by the courts are able to referenced as what the law is as well.
So if the legislator writes a law making apples illegal, but a court decided that wasnt true for guys named John, then when someone is charged for it they could cite the "not Johns" ruling as why it shouldn't apply to them.