burden of proof

noun · Beweislast

The burden of proof is the Beweislast. The German ground rule allocates it by favour: each party must prove the factual preconditions of the norm favourable to it, and the objective Beweislast decides who loses when a fact remains unproven. Alongside it runs the Darlegungslast, the burden of pleading the facts in the first place.

Which translation, when

Grundregel und non liquetthe allocation: each party bears the Beweislast for the factual preconditions of the rule favourable to it, the claimant for the claim-founding facts, the defendant for defences; where the court, after all the evidence, can treat a fact neither as true nor as untrue, the non liquet, the objective Beweislast decides against the party who needed the fact, and the Darlegungslast, the burden of setting the facts out, runs ahead of it as its pleading-stage twin.

Umkehr und Vermutungenthe exceptions: statute and case law shift the burden in defined pockets, through legal presumptions and through Beweislastumkehr, for instance the presumption for consumers that a defect showing within the statutory period existed at delivery, § 477 BGB, or the shift to the treating side after a grave treatment error in medical liability, § 630h Abs. 5 BGB; a translation should keep such shifts visible as exceptions to the favour rule, not as the rule itself.

Why

The burden of proof is the Beweislast, and the pair is stable, so the work of the entry is the machinery behind the word. German law allocates the burden by a favour principle: each party must prove the factual preconditions of the norm from which it draws a benefit, the claimant those of the claim, the defendant those of the defences. The allocation matters at the moment of non liquet, when the court after full evidence can treat a decisive fact neither as true nor as untrue; then the objective Beweislast operates as a rule of decision and the party who needed the fact loses on it. In front of the Beweislast runs the Darlegungslast, the burden of pleading: a party must first set out the facts before any question of proving them arises, and the two burdens usually travel together as Darlegungs- und Beweislast. The exceptions are the second thing a translation must keep straight: statutes and case law shift the burden in defined pockets, through presumptions and through Beweislastumkehr, for instance the consumer-sale presumption that a defect appearing within the statutory period was present at delivery, § 477 BGB, or the shift against the treating side after a grave treatment error, § 630h Abs. 5 BGB. These are exceptions to the favour rule, and a text that presents shifting as the norm misstates the baseline. So the safe rendering is Beweislast, with Darlegungslast alongside where the source speaks of pleading, and the allocation kept as the default against which the shifts stand out.

Typical mistakes

Each party proves the preconditions of the norm favourable to it, and at non liquet the objective Beweislast decides against the party who needed the fact, so a rendering that leaves the allocation vague loses the rule of decision.
The Darlegungslast, the burden of pleading, runs ahead of the Beweislast, so the pair Darlegungs- und Beweislast should not be collapsed into proof alone.
Presumptions and Beweislastumkehr are defined exceptions, for instance § 477 BGB and § 630h Abs. 5 BGB, so presenting the shift as the default misstates the baseline.

What matters

Rendering a passage on who must prove what, the translation should use Beweislast, keep Darlegungslast alongside for the pleading stage, and mark presumptions and Beweislastumkehr as exceptions to the favour-based allocation rather than as the rule.

What the machine misses

Machine output renders burden of proof as Beweislast correctly, but it flattens the machinery around the word. It loses the favour-based allocation and the role of the objective Beweislast at non liquet, collapses Darlegungs- und Beweislast into proof alone, and can present presumptions or reversal as the baseline rather than as defined exceptions. The rendering keeps the word and drops the rule of decision.

See what the machine does with this clause →

Examples

the burden of proof lies with the claimant	die Beweislast trägt der Kläger
reversal of the burden of proof	Umkehr der Beweislast
burden of pleading and proof	Darlegungs- und Beweislast
to satisfy the burden of proof	der Beweislast genügen