In publica commoda

Title of the Project:
“Judicial Control of Contracts of Employment”

The reform of German contract law came into force on January 1st, 2002. Before the contract law has been reformed, the contracts which belong to the employment law were excluded from the objective scope of the Gesetz zur Regelung des Rechts der Allgemeinen Geschäftsbedingungen (AGBG). Instead of controlling the contracts of employment with the help of the rules of the AGBG, the jurisdiction used various methods of controlling under the call in of many different laws to measure the content of the contracts of employment. This legal status changed because of the mentioned legislative reform. The legislator integrated the regulations of the AGBG in the Bürgerliche Gesetzbuch (§§ 305 ff BGB) and amended the content of the existing law. With regard to collective agreements like union agreements nothing changed. They are outside the scope of the regulations in question. The contract-control of other agreements which belong to the employment law is now based on §§ 305 ff BGB. Admittedly the exceptional features of the employment law should be taken into consideration appropriately.
It shouldbe investigated if this legislative reform will lead to changes in the course of control and its result. Will there be stricter requests for standardized contracts of employment? Will there be a change in the dispensation of justice?
These questions posed above should be answered by an analysis of law and verdicts. Furthermore the current literature will be discussed.
The national point of view should be supplemented. Only the comparison to a contract-control-system of another country leads to a sufficient conclusion wheter the german juidicial control of contracts of employment has a high or a low standard. In this sense Great Britain could be an interresting country because of its conservative contract law which is tradtionally characterized by low restrictions for the contracting parties.