German legal citation

As in most countries, Germany has a standard way of citing its legal codes and case law; an essentially identical system of citation is also used in Austria.

There is, however, no authoritative citation style similar in importance to the Bluebook (in the United States) or OSCOLA (in the United Kingdom). Legal journals use self-made "house" citation styles, and the most influential style guide probably are the Author's Instructions of the Neue Juristische Wochenschrift, arguably the most important legal journal in Germany.

As an example, the famous or notorious Paragraph 175, which formerly made male homosexuality a crime in Germany, would most properly be cited in an English-language text as "§ 175 StGB (Germany)". "§" simply denotes "paragraph" (and can be pluralized as "§§"). "StGB" stands for Strafgesetzbuch (penal code); other similar usages would be "BGB" (Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, the Civil Code) and "ZPO" (Zivilprozessordnung, the Civil Procedure Code). Paragraphs with the same number from these different codes are completely unrelated; thus, § 175 ZPO has nothing to do with § 175 StGB.

Finally, unless the context is clear, "(Germany)" may be added to distinguish this from the similar system of citation for Austria; again, paragraphs with the same number in German and Austrian legal codes are unrelated, except in laws that were introduced in Austria with the Anschluss in 1938, such as the AktG (Stock Corporations Act), which, of course, has frequently been amended in different ways in both countries since then. A method that is sometimes employed in Austrian legal writing to distinguish between Austrian and German law is to add a lower case "d" for Germany (German: Deutschland) and an "ö" for Austria (German: Österreich) before the abbreviation of the respective code, e.g. "dAktG" and "öAktG" referring to the German and Austrian stock corporations acts.

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