Franz Klein

Franz Klein was an Austrian jurist and statesman who studied and later taught law in Vienna, habilitating in civil procedure and Roman law in 1891. His essay Pro Futuro called for a fundamental reform of Austrian civil procedure and led to his appointment at the Ministry of Justice, where he drafted the 1895 Austrian Code of Civil Procedure, replacing regulations dating to 1781. Klein's reform strengthened the investigating judge's authority to protect the weaker party in a dispute, moving Austrian civil procedure toward a more active, inquisitorial model, and the code became an internationally influential model for procedural reform in other civil law systems. He was appointed to the Austrian House of Lords in 1905 and twice served as Minister of Justice, in 1906 to 1908 and briefly in 1916.