German Cities Can Ban Diesel Cars, Court Rules (cnet.com)

Posted by msmash on Tuesday February 27, 2018 @04:55AM from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.

A German court has ruled that cities in Germany are allowed to enact bans on diesel vehicles, Reuters reports. It's unlikely that bans will magically appear across the country overnight, but not everyone in the country is happy about this decision. From a report: Environmentalists might be happy about the possibility of banning some of the road's dirtiest cars, but owners and right-leaning groups are not. Reuters reports that some politicians believe this decision could disenfranchise a large swath of car owners across the country, many of whom likely can't afford to immediately replace a vehicle.

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Not really surprising by Solandri · 2018-02-27 05:17 · Score: 5, Informative

Germany has a civil law system. Judges merely interpret the law as written, they do not set precedents. Unless there's some German national law specifically prohibiting the banning of previously sold products, there's not much a German judge can do to block a legislature from passing such a ban - the legislative body holds ultimate power. It's not like a common law system where previous court decisions about ownership rights, resale rights, and prohibitions on ex-post facto laws would come into play because they're similar, even if they didn't specifically mention banning a previously sold product.