governing law

Which translation, when

Why

A choice-of-law clause picks a legal order, everything in it, statutes, case law, the rules that never made it into a code, and German usage keeps that width, man wählt deutsches Recht oder englisches Recht, the framework is Art. 3 Abs. 1 Rom I-VO. The laws of England, the English drafting plural, is a stylistic habit, not a list of Acts, so its German counterpart is englisches Recht, and a translation that says die Gesetze Englands has narrowed the choice to legislation in a legal order built famously on judge-made law. One more width problem hides on the German side: deutsches Recht includes the UN Sales Convention for cross-border sales of goods, Art. 1 CISG, so a choice of German law that stays silent selects the Convention along with the BGB, exclusion runs through Art. 6 CISG, and the English reader, whose own jurisdiction never ratified it, rarely sees this coming.

Typical mistakes

• Die Gesetze Englands for the laws of England reads as statutes only, English law lives in its judgments, the German for the drafting plural is englisches Recht.
• Geltendes Recht as a heading names the law in force, not the law chosen, German drafting titles the clause anwendbares Recht or Rechtswahl.
• A choice of deutsches Recht brings the CISG with it for international sales of goods, Art. 1 CISG, silence keeps it, exclusion needs words, Art. 6 CISG.

What matters

Boilerplate at the very end of the contract, one line, this Agreement is governed by the laws of Germany: the working German version is dieser Vertrag unterliegt deutschem Recht, and for a cross-border sale of goods the next sentence should say whether the CISG is excluded. The Gesetze version will still be construed as a Rechtswahl, but it announces that nobody who knew German law read the text.

Examples