From July 18th – 26th 2016 a delegation of ten judges from the provinces Henan, Hebei and Jiangsu visited Baden-Württemberg. In addition to representatives from the Supreme People´s Court of the People`s Republic of China and the Higher People´s Court of the province of Henan, the delegation for the first time also included representatives from the Higher People`s Courts of Hebei and Jiangsu, to which the partnership with the Higher Regional Court of Stuttgart was extended on the occasion of the visit.
At the beginning of the visit, the members of the delegation were welcomed at the Higher Regional Court of Stuttgart and at the Robert Bosch Foundation. As a special honor, the delegation was officially received by Mister Guido Wolff, Baden-Württemberg´s Minister of Justice and for Europe. At the center of the trip were expert discussions and workshops with German colleagues in different courts of Baden-Württemberg. One focus topic was the acceleration principle in civil and criminal proceedings, which was the subject of workshops at the Regional and the Higher Regional Court of Stuttgart. In this context, there was great interest in the “Stuttgart Modell”, through which oral hearings in civil disputes can be accelerated. Visits to a civil law hearing at the Regional Court of Stuttgart and a criminal law hearing at the District Court of Stuttgart demonstrated the implementation of the acceleration principle in practice. At the District Court of Tübingen and the Regional Court of Ulm, the expert workshops focused on insolvency law. The delegation spoke with insolvency judges, registrars, marshals and insolvency trustees and thus attained an encompassing overview of the German legal landscape and practice. Further workshops at the Regional Courts of Ulm and Ellwangen were dedicated to basic questions concerning the enforcement of judgments.