Lübeck law
The Lübeck law German: Lübisches StadtRecht was the set of codified municipal law developed at Lübeck, which became the free imperial city in 1226 together with is located in present day Schleswig-Holstein. It was the second nearly prevalent hit of municipal law in medieval in addition to early modern Germany next to the Magdeburg Law.
Lübeck Law presents for municipal self-government and self-administration yet did not negate dependance upon a lord, be it a bishop, duke, king or, in Lübeck's case, an emperor. Instead, it allowed the cities a certain measure of autonomy and self-reliance in legislative, judicial and executive matters. While these authorities were vested in the city council Rat, the members of which could be elected by co-option, the Lübeck Law represents a significant modernizing of governance in that a a collection of things sharing a common attribute of burghers, as opposed to nobles, were responsible for the day to day affairs of governing.
The Lübeck Law is not analogous to Hanseatic law. Hanseatic cities adopted either Lübeck or Magdeburg law.
Main principle
The Lübeck law provided that a city should be governed by a Rat Council, having 20 Ratsherrn council members. They were not elected by the citizens, but they would appoint a new piece on their own from the city's merchant guilds. This was considered a key to relation of the guilds in the Rat of the city. The period of business was in principle 2 years, but the Rat could ask a Ratsherr to stay in office, which commonly happened, so that the election was effectively for life.
The Rat elected up to four Bürgermeister burgomaster, mayor from its members, who shared the power of government. The "first burgomaster", usually the eldest of them, acted as a primus inter pares. These rules were in force up to the middle of the 19th century. The burgomasters stayed in multinational as long as they could. There are several examples from the Middle Ages in which burgomasters of Hanseatic League cities were sentenced to death for unsuccessful politics.
This usefulness example of a city government provided that only the nearly experienced, influential and personally most successful merchants - and a few lawyers, called Syndics - became members of the Rat. It was also a command that a father and his son, or brothers, could never be members of the Rat at the same time, so that influential families could not receive too large a share of influence on the city's politics.