International Construction Law Review
THE PRINCIPLE OF GOOD FAITH IN GERMAN CIVIL LAW
PROFESSSOR STEFAN LEUPERTZ, ESSEN, GERMANY1
I. INTRODUCTION
The heart of German Civil Law beats in statutory regulations laid down in a Civil Law Book, the “Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (BGB)”. It establishes a Civil Code that conceptually proceeds from codified abstractions and general principles as highly sophisticated rules of law (as opposed to a compendium of statutes or a catalogue of cases) to be obeyed by the German Civil Courts. As these abstract and generally formulated regulations cannot capture the facts relevant for the judgement of a specific dispute, they have to be applied by subsuming the facts of the particular case under the statutory prerequisites. To obtain the flexibility needed in this process, German statutory law is highly influenced by undefined legal terms (“unbestimmte Rechtsbegriffe”) used as a vehicle to transport legal values and standards into jurisdiction. The principle of good faith probably comprises the most important undetermined legal concept in this sense.
II. THE FUNCTION OF GOOD FAITH
1. General Perspective
The German Civil Code (BGB) consists of five major parts:
- • General Provisions;
- • Law of obligations;
- • Law of property;
- • Family law; and
- • Law of inheritance.
Within this legal frame the principle of good faith is codified rather briefly in section 242 of the German Civil Code (BGB):
“Leistung nach Treu und Glauben
Der Schuldner ist verpflichtet, die Leistung so zu bewirken, wie Treu und Glauben mit Rücksicht auf die Verkehrssitte es erfordern.”
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