Transparenz in der Judikative

With the transformation to a constitutional democracy, the continued secrecy of court records has become an exception in need of justification. Nevertheless, court records are still principally excluded from the right of access both in EU and in German law. In an inversion of the historical development, the judiciary has preserved the arcanum of its records. The author questions and denies the legitimacy of this exemption from the freedom of information and makes suggestions to overcome it. The subject of the study is the third-party access to the files of the ECtHR, ECJ, German Constitutional Court and the German administrative courts. The results are relevant to academics, practitioners and legislators.