the respondent are private citizens or corporations, including but not limited to contract and torts disputes: Austria's legal system, having evolved from that of the Roman Empire, implements civil law and therefore lacks the distinction between courts of law and courts of equity sometimes found in common law jurisdictions. Civil courts do not try suits against the federation or its states in their capacity as administrative units, but only when acting in the form of private law. Most cases are tried before District Courts (Bezirksgerichte, abbrev.: BG, singular: Bezirksgericht), with Regional Courts (Landesgerichte, abbrev.: LG, singular: Landesgericht) serving as courts of appeal and the Supreme Court (Oberster Gerichtshof, abbrev.: OGH) serving as the court of last resort. In cases considered particularly grave or technically involved, the Regional Courts serve as courts of first instance and specialized Regional Courts of Appeal (Oberlandesgerichte, abbrev.: OLG, singular: Oberlandesgericht) serve as courts of appeal, the Supreme Court still being the court of last resort. Unlike with court systems such as that of the United States federal judiciary, parties have a statutory right to appeal. Although access to the Supreme Court has been successively restricted to matters of some importance in recent years, higher courts can generally not simply refuse to review a decision reached by subordinate courts. Note that the Supreme Court (Oberster Gerichtshof - OGH), the Constitutional Court (Verfassungsgerichtshof - VfGH) and the Administrative Court (Verwaltungsgerichtshof - VwGH) are three separate high courts, none being senior to the other two. Civil and human rights Most closely resembling a bill of rights in Austria is the Basic Law on the General Rights of Nationals of the Kingdoms and Länder represented in the Council of the Realm, a decree issued by Emperor Franz Josef on December 21, 1867 in response to pressure by liberal insurgents. A very important part of Austria's canon of constitutional civil liberties thus originated as an imperatorial edict predating the current Constitution of Austria by roughly fifty years, the reason being that the framers of the Constitution in 1920 could not agree on a set of civil liberties to include in the constitution proper: as a lowest common denominator, they resorted to this Basic Law of 1867. Since then, other civil liberties have been set out in other constitutional laws, and Austria is party to the European Convention of Human Rights, which, too, has been implemented as a directly applicable constitutional