Reichskammergericht

The Reichskammergericht, or Imperial Chamber Court, was one of the two highest judicial institutions of the Holy Roman Empire, the other being the Aulic Council in Vienna. The Imperial Diet founded it in 1495 at Worms. Almost any legal proceeding in the Empire could be brought before it, except where a territorial ruler held a privilege against appeals, in which case the highest court was set by that ruler, though the privilege could be bypassed if a litigant claimed to have been denied due process. In criminal matters it could intervene only when basic procedural rules had been broken. The court was notorious for slow proceedings, and some suits between states of the Empire ran for centuries and were still open when it was dissolved in 1806 with the fall of the Empire. More recent research suggests the delays often came from parties losing interest, and that the court sometimes acted within days, for example by ordering injunctions. Historians also note that in the eighteenth century its rulings anticipated later constitutional guarantees in Germany, such as the inviolability of the home and freedom of trade.