Judicial Practice as a Source of Law in Continental Europe

Since the second half of the twentieth century, there has been a tendency in science to recognize that judicial practice in continental Europe is a source of law /right along with the practice of legislative assemblies (and governments) and legal doctrine. According to authoritative authors, judicial law-making and case law are developed on the continent (in continental European culture), although less than in common law countries, but still to a much greater extent than is commonly believed in common law legal culture. Meanwhile systems of Anglo-American and continental case law do not function exactly the same. In particular, in Germany, the regulation of labor relations was the task, first of all, of judicial, and not legislative (parliamentary-government), rule-making. In France and Italy, the standards of legality and lawfulness of administrative regulation were also developed mainly in judicial practice. In this regard, it seems necessary to form a doctrinal position that interprets judicial law-making in a different way than is done now. In the final qualifying work, confirmation will be presented that in any system there are creative court decisions. To achieve this goal, general scientific methods, a historical method, a comparative method, as well as a document analysis method will be used.