Commercial law is the “special private law for traders”. It forms a special domain of private (civil) law, although it also embraces norms forming part of public law. The application of commercial law depends on the trader status of at least one of the legal subjects involved.
Commercial law does not represent a complete body of law sui generis; on the contrary, it contains provisions that are supplementary to the general provisions, in particular those of the Civil Code. This means that the provisions of the Civil Code apply to traders on a subsidiary basis only. Commercial law takes account of special needs regarding legal relations in a commercial context: a large measure of personal responsibility on the part of actors, for instance through contractual penalties (section 348 Commercial Code [Handelsgesetzbuch] - ComC: § 348 HGB) and freedom from requirements as to form (section 350 ComC: § 350 HGB); payments also where there is no need for specific agreement (section 353 ComC: § 353 HGB); application of commercial practices (§ 346 HGB), expeditious handling of commercial matters for instance through the prompt notification requirement regarding defects (section 377 ComC: § 377 HGB), as well as legal certainty and disclosure (sections 5, 15 ComC: §§ 5, 15 HGB). The essentials of the German codification of commercial law in the narrow sense – are to be found in the Commercial Code (ComC). In addition to this, there is supplementary legislation, such as the Bills of Exchange Act and the Cheques Act, industrial property protection and partnership and company law.
Economic law consists of all those legal norms and measures, under private law, criminal law and public law, with which the state impacts on the legal relations of persons participating in economic activity inter se and in their relationship with the state; it is the generic term used to cover the law governing economic transactions and it also forms the legal basis for economic policy. Economic law is made up of three elements: the law governing the constituent elements of the economy, economic administration law and economic private law. In principle, the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany (BL) does not make any express provision for a specific form of economic system. In the view of the Federal Constitutional Court, the Basic Law is therefore politically neutral in economic matters and is bound only by the constitutional principles of a social state based on the Rule of Law, of basic rights and democracy.
