About Medizinrecht

Medizinrecht

Medizinrecht — abbreviated MedR — is a German-language legal specialist journal for medical and health law, published monthly. Founded in 1983, it appears in the Springer publishing house in joint publication with the Munich legal publisher C. H. Beck, and in 2026 it is in its 44th year. As the link between the disciplines of law and medicine, the journal addresses questions from both fields and aims to be comprehensible to lawyers and physicians alike. Its readership consists of lawyers specializing in medical law, judges, in-house counsel at hospitals and insurers, and physicians and healthcare managers concerned with the legal framework of their work. In the German legal press, MedR holds the position of the leading journal in its field: the forum for the integrative and interdisciplinary exchange of law and medicine.

Overview

MedR presents itself as the leading specialist journal in the areas of medical and health law, offering a forum for the integrative and interdisciplinary exchange of law and medicine. Published monthly — twelve issues per year — in DIN A4 format with two-column typesetting, the journal reached a volume of around one thousand pages per year plus an annual index in recent years. The print ISSN is 0723-8886; the online ISSN is 1433-8629. The journal is published in connection with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Medizinrecht e.V. (German Association for Medical Law).

The readership is defined by specialization: attorneys practicing medical liability, contract-physician, hospital, pharmaceutical, and medical-device law; judges at the civil, social, and criminal courts who decide medical-law cases; legal departments of hospitals, health insurers, and medical associations; and physicians, particularly those in practice management and clinical leadership, who need to understand the legal conditions of their work. The journal's self-description emphasizes scientifically grounded, comprehensible essays on all professionally practical, structural, and fundamental legal questions of the healthcare system.

The journal is abstracted and indexed in international scientific databases including SCOPUS, EBSCO, and Google Scholar, reflecting its standing as a peer-reviewed legal-science periodical. Its articles are distributed digitally through Springer Nature's online platforms and through the beck-online database of C. H. Beck, giving the journal's content reach into both the legal and the medical publishing ecosystems.

History

The journal Medizinrecht was founded in 1983 — a period in which medical law was establishing itself as an independent legal discipline in Germany. The growing juridification of medicine, from liability law to the regulation of the healthcare system, created the need for a dedicated scholarly forum that would bring together the legal and medical perspectives. The journal was conceived from the start as this bridge: thematizing questions of both disciplines and remaining comprehensible to both lawyers and physicians.

The publishing arrangement — Springer in joint publication with C. H. Beck of Munich — combined the medical-science publishing competence of Springer with the legal-publishing authority of Beck, Germany's leading law publisher. This dual anchoring has remained stable for more than four decades and gives the journal its distinctive character: a legal journal with direct access to the medical discourse, and a medical-law journal with the full weight of legal scholarship behind it.

Over its 44 years of publication, the journal has accompanied the development of German medical law through its major phases: the expansion of medical liability jurisprudence, the reforms of contract-physician law, the regulation of pharmaceuticals and medical devices, the emergence of nursing law as a field, and the digitalization of healthcare. The connection with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Medizinrecht e.V. ties the journal to the professional association of the discipline, whose conferences and working groups feed the journal's pages.

Coverage and Content

The editorial coverage of MedR spans the full breadth of medical and health law. The journal informs comprehensively about the law of medical treatment, physician and medical-liability law, contract-physician law, health-insurance law, medical criminal law, the professional and disciplinary law of the healing professions, hospital law, fee law, pharmaceutical and pharmacy law, medical-device law, nursing law, and the contract drafting of cooperations in the healthcare system.

The article section (Aufsatzteil) discusses the spectrum of medical-law topics in scholarly essays: fundamental questions of the discipline alongside practice-oriented analyses of new legislation and jurisprudence. The case-law section (Rechtsprechungsteil) prints expertly prepared court decisions — the decisions that shape medical-law practice, from the Federal Court of Justice's liability rulings to the social courts' contract-physician decisions. Book reviews and association notices complete the issues.

The editorial leadership reflects the journal's dual identity: the Schriftleiter (managing editors) are Christian Katzenmeier of the Institute for Medical Law at the University of Cologne and Franz-Josef Dahm, attorney and notary; the Redakteur (editor) is Ernest F. Rigizahn, attorney. This combination of academic and practitioner editorship ensures that the journal serves both the scholarly development of the field and the daily work of its readers. The journal's association with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Medizinrecht e.V. further anchors it in the professional community: the association's conferences, working groups, and continuing-education activities feed directly into the journal's pages, making MedR the written record of the discipline's collective discourse.

Organization and Ownership

Medizinrecht (MedR) is published by Springer Nature — the Springer-Verlag GmbH Deutschland — in joint publication with the Verlag C. H. Beck oHG of Munich. The journal's home page is maintained within Springer Nature's journal platform (springer.com/journal/350), and the title is also distributed through C. H. Beck's beck-online database, where the MedR PLUS module makes the journal available to subscribers of the publisher's medical- and health-law premium modules.

The journal is published in connection with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Medizinrecht e.V., the professional association of the discipline. The Schriftleiter are Christian Katzenmeier (Institute for Medical Law, University of Cologne) and Franz-Josef Dahm (attorney and notary); the editor is Ernest F. Rigizahn (attorney). The journal is abstracted and indexed in SCOPUS, EBSCO, Google Scholar, and other international databases, and its content is preserved through digital archiving services.

The subscription model is that of a scholarly legal journal: annual subscriptions for print plus online use, with the 2026 annual subscription price listed at 695.50 euros plus distribution costs for domestic individual customers. Institutional subscriptions serve university libraries, court libraries, and the legal departments of hospitals and insurers. Precise circulation figures are not publicly confirmed in freely available sources. The journal's enduring dual-publisher arrangement — Springer's scientific platform on one side, Beck's legal-publishing authority on the other — remains unusual in German legal publishing and underlines MedR's bridging mission between the two disciplines it serves.

Digital Presence

The journal's digital home is its Springer Nature journal page, where current articles, the journal's bibliographic information, and its indexing details are presented. The electronic ISSN 1433-8629 identifies the online edition, and the co-publisher information names C. H. Beck alongside Springer. The journal's articles are discoverable through the international scientific indexes — SCOPUS, EBSCO, Dimensions, Google Scholar — in which the title is abstracted, giving its German-language medical-law scholarship visibility in the global research infrastructure.

Through beck-online, C. H. Beck's legal database, the journal reaches the legal profession's primary digital research environment: the MedR PLUS module integrates the journal into the publisher's medical- and health-law premium offerings, making four decades of medical-law scholarship searchable alongside the publisher's commentaries and handbooks. The beck-shop presents the journal's subscription terms and bibliographic data to the book trade. This dual digital distribution — Springer's scientific platform and Beck's legal database — mirrors the journal's founding concept: the bridge between law and medicine, maintained in print and online for more than four decades.