With its legacy as the centre of one of the greatest empires of modern history, Austriaè^--s legal system has for long been enormously influential worldwide. A European Union Member State since 1995, Austria continues to enjoy its role as a major centre of international business and tourism. Austria has also become host to numerous international organisations.

This book provides an introduction to the Austrian state,legal system and laws. It provides a guide to a number of areas of Austrian substantive law, concentrating on the most important areas of public and private law. The book considers in depth, the historical, political, social and economic aspects of the Austrian State to give more background for those coming afresh to Austrian studies. This book will appeal to academic comparative lawyers across a range of disciplines and academics who require fundamental information on the Austrian state and legal systems. It will make attractive supplementary reading on comparative law courses, especially for those students spending a third year in Austria. It will also prove useful for politics and economics or multidisciplinary studies students who study Austria either directly or for comparison with other countries.

This book presents a broad range of aspects of Austrian law & legal culture for the purpose of comparison with other legal systems. It treats the following subjects: political history, the Constitution, sources & interpretation of law, the political system, Austria & the European Union, legal education & professions, the courts, administrative adjudication, constitutional review, fundamental rights, criminal procedure, the civil law tradition, & the Austrian Civil Code. These characteristic features have been selected in order to acquaint the foreign observer with some of the defining elements of Austrian law & legal development. Austrian students & practitioners, too, may find this approach helpful when it comes to explaining their law to others.

Derived from the renowned multi-volume International Encyclopaedia of Laws, this convenient volume provides comprehensive analysis of the law affecting the physician-patient relationship in Austria. Cutting across the traditional compartments with which lawyers are familiar, medical law is concerned with issues arising from this relationship, and not with the many wider juridical relations involved in the broader field of health care law. After a general introduction, the book systematically describes law related to the medical profession, proceeding from training, licensing, and other aspects of access to the profession, through disciplinary and professional liability and medical ethics considerations and quality assurance, to such aspects of the physician-patient relationship as rights and duties of physicians and patients, consent, privacy, and access to medical records. Also covered are specific issues such as organ transplants, human medical research, abortion, and euthanasia, as well as matters dealing with the physician in relation to other health care providers, health care insurance, and the health care system. Succinct and practical, this book will prove to be of great value to professional organizations of physicians, nurses, hospitals, and relevant government agencies. Lawyers representing parties with interests in Austria will welcome this very useful guide, and academics and researchers will appreciate its comparative value as a contribution to the study of medical law in the international context.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1872.