[esbranson]

> legal

> don’t tell you

As a Wikipedian who has edited primarily on US legal systems but also Germany's ... I seriously doubt more than a handful of non-attorneys have any clue about the actual workings of the German legal systems.

The biggest issue is of course the lack of codified laws and regulations. (Note that collections like the Gesetze im Internet are more like US Statute Compilations. If you don't know what the Statute Compilations are and have never heard anyone mention them, case in point.) The Swiss SR is odd man out of course, even though it's unofficial it's still usable. US states and states like Germany do however follow similar court reporting practices, e.g. court case decisions are only selectively published, so we have similarly little insight into how laws are actually implemented in practice. (The US federal government is better, but its impact on everyday people is incomparable.)