Judiciary of Austria

The judiciary of Austria is the system of courts, prosecution and correction of the Republic of Austria as well as the branch of government responsible for upholding the rule of law and administering justice. The judiciary is independent of the other two branches of government and is committed to guaranteeing fair trials and equality before the law. It has broad and effective powers of judicial review.
Structurally, the Austrian judiciary is divided into general courts and courts of public law.
The general courts handle civil and criminal trials as well as non-adversary proceedings such as inheritance cases or legal guardianship matters.
The courts of public law supervise the other two branches of government: the administrative court system reviews the legality of administrative acts; the Constitutional Court adjudicates on complaints regarding the constitutionality of statutes, the legality of ordinances, and the conduct of elected officials and political appointees in office.
In addition to the court system proper, the judicial arm of Austrian state power includes the state prosecution service, the prisons and the correctional officers' corps. Remand prisons for pre-trial detention or other types of non-correctional custody belong to the executive branch.
The judiciary is assisted by the Ministry of Justice, a cabinet-level division of the national executive.

Organization

The administration of justice in Austria is the sole responsibility of the federal government. Judges and prosecutors are recruited, trained, and employed by the Republic; courts hand down verdicts in the name of the Republic. There is no such thing, for example, as an Austrian county court.
The court system has two branches:

general courts try criminal cases and civil cases;
courts of public law try civil cases in which the respondent is a government authority:
*the Constitutional Court exercises judicial review of legislation and constitutional review of administrative actions;
*a system of administrative courts exercises judicial review of administrative actions.

Judges are independent. Appointments are for life; judges cannot be removed or reassigned without their consent. In courts with more than one judge − which is essentially all of them − there has to be a fixed and specific apportionment of responsibilities to prevent the government from influencing outcomes by hand-picking a judge sympathetic to its perspective. For example, if a litigant files for divorce in a court with multiple judges handling divorce cases, the first letter of their last name decides which judge they are assigned.
Judges presiding over trials are professionals. In order to become eligible for appointment to a bench, a prospective judge needs to have a master's degree or equivalent in Austrian law, undergo four years of post-graduate training, and pass an exam. The training includes theoretical instruction and internship-type practical work in an actual courthouse. Appointments to benches are made by the president, although the president can and does delegate most of this responsibility to the minister of justice. Nominations come from within the judiciary; panels of judges suggest candidates for benches with vacancies.
There is no military justice in peacetime; members of the military are tried by the regular court system.

Procedure

Trials are oral and public.
Civil trials are adversarial trials.
The court evaluates evidence brought before it by the parties to the trial but makes no attempt to uncover any additional evidence or otherwise investigate the matter itself.
Criminal trials are inquisitorial trials.
The court is actively involved, questioning witnesses brought forward by the parties to the trials, summoning expert witnesses on its own initiative, and generally attempting to determine the truth.
Most trials are bench trials, although the bench will often be a panel including one or more lay judges. Criminal defendants accused of political transgressions or of serious crimes with severe penalties have a right to trial by jury.
Pursuant to the European Convention on Human Rights, which has been adopted into the Austrian constitution, but also to Austrian constitutional law preceding it, criminal defendants are protected by the set of procedural guarantees typical for modern liberal democracies. Among other things, defendants

are presumed innocent until proven guilty;
have the right to a speedy trial;
cannot be tried in absentia;
cannot be forced to incriminate themselves;
cannot be tried for transgressions that are not specifically defined to be criminal offenses by statutory law, or that not specifically defined to be criminal offenses by statutory law ;
cannot be prosecuted twice for the same crime, alleged or actual ;
have a right to an appeal.

The right to an appeal is taken seriously. Any party to any trial before a general court can file an appeal on facts and law.
If the case is a civil case, the appellate court first checks whether the trial court has committed procedural errors; if yes, it orders a retrial, sending the case back to the trial court.
If no, or if the case is criminal, the appellate court conducts what is essentially a retrial itself − the appellate trial does not merely review questions of law but also questions of fact, assessing evidence and questioning witnesses.
In addition to the appeal on facts and law against the verdict of the trial court, an appeal at law can be filed against the verdict of the appellate court.
In criminal cases, appeals at law that are not obviously frivolous are also handled in public hearings. A successful appeal at law not just overturns but completely erases the verdict of the appellate court, sending the case down the ladder again.
Verdicts of trial courts − although not of appellate courts − that result from the trial court's application of an unconstitutional statute or an illegal ordinance can additionally be fought with extraordinary appeals at law to the Constitutional Court.

General courts

The hierarchy of general courts has four levels: district, regional, higher regional, and supreme.
For most cases, original jurisdiction lies with one of the district courts; its decision can be appealed to the relevant regional court. Some cases are first tried before the regional court and can be appealed to the higher regional court. Except for special types proceedings, higher regional courts and the Supreme Court do not have original jurisdiction; they exclusively hear appeals.
One of the peculiarities of the Austrian judiciary is its strict organizational separation of civil and criminal justice.
Courts are divided into civil and criminal chambers; judges spend their days trying either civil cases or criminal cases but never both.
In Vienna and in Graz − the country's two largest cities by a wide margin − the two chambers of the regional court are actually two completely separate courts, housed in separate buildings. In Vienna, there is a third regional court for trials at mercantile law and a fourth regional court for cases involving employment and social assistance law. Normally, original jurisdiction over disputes in these areas of law would lie with the civil regional court. As an additional special case, the higher regional court in Vienna has original jurisdiction over antitrust cases.

District courts

There are currently 115 district courts.
Most judicial districts are coextensive with one of the country's 94 administrative districts, although there are exceptions.
Some of the larger administrative districts are partitioned into two or more judicial districts. The extreme case is the City of Vienna, home to no fewer than 12 separate district courts.
In some cases, a district court serving a city also serves part of the surrounding suburbs. In others, two or three very small administrative districts are lumped together into a single judicial zone.
District courts are responsible for

civil trials involving matrimonial and family matters, real estate rental or lease matters, real estate boundary or easement disputes, or trespass to land;
most simple debt collection, foreclosure, and bankruptcy matters;
other civil trials with the amount in dispute not exceeding €15,000, excepting employment and social assistance disputes;
most criminal trials involving finable offenses or jailable offenses with a jail term of no more than one year;
most non-adversary matters, for example probate proceedings, adoptions, declarations of death in absentia, or invalidation of lost securities certificates;
most adversary non-trial matters, including but not limited to child custody disputes, child maintenance and visitation rights disputes, appointments of legal guardians for senile elders or the mentally ill, or expropriation proceedings;
maintaining the land register.

Trials before the district court are bench trials decided by a single judge. Non-adversary proceedings, debt collection, foreclosure, bankruptcy, and land register matters can also be decided by a judiciary clerk.
While there are permanent district judges, there are no district. Criminal trials are prosecuted by a state attorney attached to the relevant regional court. In minor cases, the public prosecutor can assign a district prosecutor to substitute for them. The district prosecutor is not necessarily an attorney, however, and cannot act on their own initiative or authority.

Regional courts

There are 18 regional courts in Austria; their seats are in Eisenstadt, Feldkirch, Graz, Innsbruck, Klagenfurt, Korneuburg, Krems an der Donau, Leoben, Linz, Ried im Innkreis, Salzburg, Sankt Pölten, Steyr, Vienna, Wels, and Wiener Neustadt. In Graz and Vienna, the civil and criminal chambers set up as two separate courts, meaning that Graz and Vienna each have a civil regional court and a criminal regional court.
Regional courts are responsible for

exercising original jurisdiction over all civil and criminal matters not handled by district courts;
hearing appeals on facts and law against district court decisions;
keeping the company register.

In cases for which the regional court has original jurisdiction, the trial is usually a bench trial decided by a single professional judge, but there are several exceptions:

Suits at employment law or social assistance law are decided by a panel of three judges, one professional judge and two lay judges. The lay judges are lay judges and are effectively meant to double as court-appointed disinterested expert witnesses.
Other civil suits can be tried by three-judge panels upon request of the parties if the amount in dispute exceeds EUR 100,000. In cases at mercantile law, the panel consists of two professional judges and one expert lay judge. In other cases, the panel consists of three professional judges.
Criminal trials are held before three-judge panels, four-judge panels, or juries in cases of alleged homicide, sexual assault, robbery, certain types of grand larceny or fraud, and in any case where the alleged crime carries a maximum jail term of more than five years. The specifics are somewhat involved; the following is a rough outline:
* Most of the cases outlined above go before a three-judge panel consisting of one professional judge and two lay judges.
* In cases of alleged manslaughter, aggravated robbery, rape, membership in a terrorist organization, abuse of official authority, or financial crimes causing more than EUR 1,000,000 in damage, a second professional judge is added to the panel.
* Charges of murder, actual terrorist violence, or armed insurrection are jury trials decided by three professional judges and eight jurors. The same is true for treason, a number of other political crimes, and all other crimes with minimum jail terms of more than five and maximum jail terms of more than ten years.

In criminal trials, some effort is made to prevent panels and juries from being biased or unable to empathize with either defendants or alleged victims. If the crime alleged is a sexual assault or some other violation of a person's sexual integrity serious enough to warrant a panel, then at least one of the judges must belong to the same sex as the alleged victim. If there is a jury, then at least two of the jurors must be of the same sex as the alleged victim. If the defendant is juvenile and the alleged crime is serious enough to warrant a panel, then at least one of the judges must be of the same sex as the defendant and at least one of the judges must be a present or former educator or competent social worker. If there is a jury, at least two of the jurors must be of the relevant sex and at least four must have the relevant job experience.
Appeals of district courts decisions to regional courts are decided by three-judge panels: two professional judges and one expert lay judge in trials at mercantile law, three professional judges in all other civil matters and in all criminal cases.
Routine company register decisions are made by single judges or by judicial clerks.
Attached to every regional court dealing with criminal trials, there is a branch of the state prosecution service and a prison. Regional courts and regional-level state prosecutors organize and supervise most of the pre-trial work in Austria, even in cases in which the main court proceedings are going to take place in a district court. In many ways, the regional courts are the backbone of the Austrian judiciary.