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Contents: 1. Introduction. 2. Historical development. 3. Judges at the labour courts. 3.1. The composition of the bench. 3.2. Qualification and recruitment of the presiding judge. 3.3. Appointment, qualification and position of honorary judges. 4. Characteristic features of the legal proceedings. 4.1. General aspects. 4.2. Priority of conciliation and mediation. 4.3. Costs of the litigation. 4.4. Representation in court. 5. Current developments. 5.1. Digitalisation of the legal proceedings. 5.2. Decrease in the number of labour court cases. 6. Concluding remarks.
1. Introduction
“A legal system that allows itself a special labour jurisdiction expresses that it is particularly committed to the human, material and non-material needs of people. This is the claim to be realised by labour jurisdiction in the past, present and future; the raison d’être of this special branch of jurisdiction is based on this”1.
With these words, which can also be found on the homepage of the Federal Labour Court2, the eminent labour law professor Peter Hanau (*1935) summarised decades ago3 the special circumstance that Germany has a labour judiciary that is completely separate from the ordinary judiciary in terms of organisation and personnel in all three instances, with equal participation of employers and employees.