REINHARD GREGER, 

Prof., Dr., Head of the Department of Civil Law, Civil Procedure and Out-of-Court Settlement of the 

Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Former Judge of the Federal Court of Justice of Germany 

A personal computer is part of working instruments of a judge, and using electronic legal sources is everyday practice; judges use electronic mail services more and more in Germany, as it gives possibility to send information to parties fast and safe; legal data bases provide fast access to court practice and legal literature – and all these forms of using internet by judges integrate also court practice about use of information from the internet about finding out the essential circumstances of the case. The article is devoted to the legal qualification of evidence obtained on the Internet. Based on the established jurisprudence, the author adheres to the classical German understanding of the role of the court in civil procedure, which can be expressed as follows: «the judge is the administrator of procedure, the parties are his masters». Within the framework of this approach, it is possible to establish a restriction on the activity of the court on the independent clarification of the circumstances of the case. This approach in German procedure, however, is permanently rethought. This article mediates the application of the established principles of civil procedure to relatively new public relations in the use of information technologies in civil procedure. The article differentiates the facts and circumstances gleaned from the Internet into generally known ones, the proof of which is not required, and generally available, for which a simplified procedure of proof is applied. 

Keywords: German civil procedure; adversarial nature of the parties; role of the court in civil procedure; activity of the court; competitiveness.