ABSTRACT
The normal structure and content of court judgments is statutorily regulated in Germany. A comprehensive selection of the other Federal Courts' more important decisions appears in official series edited by members of the courts. The best available reports of court judgments – those of the official series – allow identification of the decision by giving the name of the deciding court, the date of the court's decision and the file number. Interpretational problems concerning precedents are rarely the object of a judge's expressed reasoning and therefore rarely part of decision reports. This chapter discusses the bindingness of precedent in the practice of courts and deals with the academic debate on the bindingness of precedent. The relative overall role of precedent in the decision making of courts depends on which other authoritative materials are relevant. In Germany there are only a few explicit discussions about the bindingness and the degree of bindingness of precedents in judicial decisions.
