The judiciary of Germany is the system of courts that interprets and applies the law in the New German Reich. The German legal system is a civil law based on a comprehensive compendium of statutes, as compared to the common law systems. Germany uses an inquisitorial system where the judges are actively involved in investigating the facts of the case, as compared to an adversarial system where the role of the judge is primarily that of an impartial referee between the prosecutor and the defendant.