Das Spiegelbildprinzip im Rechtsverkehr mit ausländischen Staatenverbindungen

The recognition of foreign judgments according to autonomous German law causes particular problems if the state in which the judgment was given has a federal and not a centralist form of government. Christoph Schärtl develops an independent approach to defining the term »state« within the meaning of Section 328 I No.1 of the German Code of Civil Procedure, an approach which can be applied equally to all types of federations and which is dogmatically well-founded and centered around the derivation of state jurisdiction from one common sovereign. The author examines the situation in the USA, where the individual states are to a large extent independent and have created their own legal systems, in order to show how practical this approach actually is.