German Legal History

The paper is the English version, slightly modified, of a presentation I gave at a Conference held on 24-25 October in Craiova, Romania.
On November 28, 1923, the German Reichsgericht issued a landmark decision (RGZ 107, 78) granting mortgage creditors the right to revaluation after Germany's catastrophic hyperinflation. The Court ruled that creditors whose claims arose before the crisis could demand payment in gold marks rather than worthless paper marks, based on Article 242 of the German Civil Code (BGB) and its good-faith (Treu und Glauben) requirement. The Court argued that, correctly interpreted, the 1914 monetary laws never intended such extreme consequences, and that good-faith principles prevented debtors from exploiting devaluation to evade real obligations. Philipp Heck, founder of the doctrine of interests (Interessenjurisprudenz), offered a devastating critique in his article, "The judgment of the Supreme Court of the German Reich of November 28, 1923, concerning the revaluation of mortgages and the limits of judicial power" (hereinafter, Heck). While acknowledging revaluation as "an ethical imperative," Heck argued the Court's decision rested on erroneous historical interpretation, misapplied good faith principles, and exceeded judicial authority. Through rigorous analysis, Heck demonstrated that the monetary laws deliberately sacrificed creditor interests to serve wartime national policy-the harm was not unintended but the policy's operative mechanism. The controversy raised fundamental questions about legal method still relevant today: Can courts use general principles to override clear legislative commands? Should changed circumstances trigger judicial reinterpretation or require legislative reform? What are the limits of judicial power during crises? Heck's position-that courts must apply the law as historically understood, even when the results seem unjust, with changed circumstances justifying legislative rather than judicial action-articulated a vision of judicial restraint as essential to constitutional democracy. His critique proved prescient: the methodological approach embodied in the Reichsgericht's decision, treating judges as guardians of justice against democratically enacted law, established dangerous precedents that would resurface as Germany faced far greater crises in the following decade.

Resumen
La obra de Gustav Radbruch ha sido mayormente estudiada desde la Filosofía del Derecho penal. El presente trabajo tratrá de contextualizarla en los avances de su maestro Franz von Liszt a fin de poner de relieve las contribuciones científicas de Radbruch como político y científico.
Se espera hacer un aporte al conocimiento de su obra, específicamente en relación al Derecho penal y Derecho Penitenciario.

Abstract
Gustav Radbruch's work has been studied mainly from the perspective of Philosophy of Criminal Law philosophy. This paper will attempt to contextualize it within the advances made by his mentor Franz von Liszt in order to highlight Radbruch's scientific contributions as a politician and Legal scientist.
It is hoped that this will contribute to the understanding of his work, specifically in relation to criminal law and prison law.

This book offers a comprehensive exploration of German legal theory and the practice of interpretation.
The book is divided into seven main sections, serving as a clear roadmap for readers.
It begins by explaining the fundamental process of applying legal norms, including their structure, how they are expanded and applied to specific cases, and the concept of subsumption, which involves fitting a particular case under a general legal rule. It then introduces the judicial syllogism as a critical tool in legal reasoning.
The second section delves into the history of legal interpretation in Germany, tracing the evolution of different schools of thought from Savigny‘s canon of interpretation methods through various movements such as conceptual jurisprudence (Begriffsjurisprudenz), the School of Objective Interpretation, and the Free Law School, culminating in the doctrine of interests (Interessenjurisprudenz).
The third part explores the debate between subjective and objective interpretation systems, presenting arguments for both sides. It also proposes a potential reconciliation of the two approaches, suggesting that a balanced approach that considers both the lawgiver‘s subjective intentions and the law‘s objective meaning could be the most effective.
The following sections (IV, V, and VII) break down specific methods of interpretation: literal, subjective, and objective. Each is explored in detail, discussing its aims, structures, and applications in legal practice.


Section VI focuses on the development of law, distinguishing between interpretation and development, and exploring the concept of gaps in the law. It presents various arguments and techniques for developing law and filling legal gaps, including analogies, restrictive interpretation, and teleological reduction.
The book‘s practical approach, rich in examples, case studies, and annexes, is designed to equip readers with tools to apply the theoretical concepts in real-world legal scenarios, fostering a deep and confident understanding of the topic.

The article explores Carl Schmitt’s influence on Hungarian legal science and political public opinion, especially before 1945. On the one hand, it analyses which elements of Schmitt’s theories were discussed in Hungary and why the ‘Großraumlehre’, in particular, attracted significant interest. On the other hand, Schmitt’s two visits to Budapest (1942 and 1943) are briefly described, especially regarding his lecture on ‘The State of European Legal Science’, which was first published in Hungarian and contained connections with conservative-traditionalist Hungarian legal theory.

Theater und Musik stehen im Mittelpunkt der Darstellung der Kulturwissenschaftlerin Susanne Falk. Als charakteristisches Defizit konstatiert sie einen Mangel an Austausch der Region mit Metropolen und Kulturzentren. Der Theologe Reimund Haas eröffnet den religionsgeschichtlichen Themensektor mit seinem Beitrag über das katholische Leben und die Pfarreien. Beiträge zu religiösen Minderheiten beschließen den Teilband: Jürgen Kampmann zu den evangelischen Kirchengemeinden, Georg Glade zu den Juden und Ahmet Arslan zu den muslimischen Gemeinden. Insgesamt liegt ein Opus mehr oder weniger ausgereifter Beiträge zu einer Kleinregion vor, das zwar Wünsche offenlässt, aber als informatives Nachschlagewerk zu einem weiten Themenspektrum dienen kann.

This working paper aims to contribute to the transdisciplinary debates on how to analyze asymmetric forms of dependency at the BCDSS from the perspective of a legal historian interested in global legal history and working mainly on the “Iberian Worlds”. I will therefore first introduce traditions and methods of legal historical research, and show the specific achievements and shortcomings of these traditions by giving examples of how legal historians studied asymmetric forms of dependency. In the second part, I will briefly show that legal history can be understood as a history of the translation of normative knowledge. This innovative approach can help to overcome some of the shortcomings of the research tradition in this field by opening legal historical research for practices and allowing us to integrate into its analysis modes of normativity other than those that resulted in the (Western) modern state. Building on this, I will in the third part explain the concept of “Historical Regimes of Normativity”, which is a form of observation of more or less stable constellations of normative knowledge.

rules, where nuances of specific cases could be lost and individual human concerns would be overridden by rational concepts. If legal science becomes too powerful, it could, like positive law, forget and neglect the original source of law in the Volksgeist.47 It is helpful to consider Savigny’s favorite example of insightful legal science. The value of Roman law, he argues, lies not in the laws of Rome themselves, nor even in the principles used by Roman jurists, but in the method through which the Romans combined a mastery of legal principles with an unparalleled insight into the historical life of the Roman Volk.48 Above all else, the Roman jurists excelled at the melding of legal knowledge with insight into the historical unity of the people. “What made Rome great,” Savigny writes, “[was the] active, living political sense with which this people was always ready to rejuvenate its constitution in such a way that the new served merely the development of the old.”49 The Romans saw t...

Das politische und vereinigte Europa ist für Antonio Padoa-Schioppa Ausdruck einer "cultura giuridica". Dank des gelungenen, mit den Mitteln und Institutionen des Rechts sich vollziehenden Vereinigungsprozesses seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg könnte es, seiner Meinung nach, auch als Modell für die Welt dienen. Nach einem rechtshistorischen Lehrbuch, in dem er die italienische Rechtsgeschichte bereits in den größeren Kontext der allgemeinen europäischen Rechtsgeschichte einordnete, weitet PadoaSchioppa den Blick in seiner neuesten, monumentalen Darstellung von vornherein auf eine gesamteuropäische Perspektive. Diese erstreckt sich institutionell vom Ende des spätrömischen Reichs bis hin zur Europäischen Union und den Vereinten Nationen und reicht rechtswissenschaftlich von der oralen, ungelehrten Rechtskultur des Frühmittelalters über die italienischen Universitäten im Mittelalter bis zur deutschen Rechtswissenschaft des 19. Jahrhunderts und zu den amerikanischen Spitzen-Law Sch...

rules, where nuances of specific cases could be lost and individual human concerns would be overridden by rational concepts. If legal science becomes too powerful, it could, like positive law, forget and neglect the original source of law in the Volksgeist.47 It is helpful to consider Savigny’s favorite example of insightful legal science. The value of Roman law, he argues, lies not in the laws of Rome themselves, nor even in the principles used by Roman jurists, but in the method through which the Romans combined a mastery of legal principles with an unparalleled insight into the historical life of the Roman Volk.48 Above all else, the Roman jurists excelled at the melding of legal knowledge with insight into the historical unity of the people. “What made Rome great,” Savigny writes, “[was the] active, living political sense with which this people was always ready to rejuvenate its constitution in such a way that the new served merely the development of the old.”49 The Romans saw t...

I. Das Max-Planck-Institut fur europaische Rechtsgeschichte fuhrte mit fi nanzieller Unterstutzung der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft von 1997 bis 2002 ein Projekt durch, das die retrospektive Digitalisierung von zeitgenossischer Literatur zum Privatund Zivilprozessrecht des 19. Jahrhunderts zum Inhalt hatte. Neben dem Schwerpunkt Deutschland sind in geringerem Umfang Osterreich und die deutschsprachige Schweiz vertreten. Im Projektverlauf wurde der gesamte einschlagige Bestand der Institutsbibliothek, 4.316 Bande, Seite fur Seite in digitale Form uberfuhrt und kostenfrei uber das Internet zur Verfugung gestellt. Mit einem Volumen von etwas mehr als 1,35 Millionen Seiten stellt die digitale Sammlung Privatrecht eine der weltweit grosten thematisch geschlossenen elektronischen Textsammlungen dar.