Fiktionen im Recht

"What is so troubling about fictions?" is Kristin Albrecht's guiding question. There are numerous answers: Condemned as "the syphilis of the law" (Bentham) and "crutches" (Jhering), many demand their elimination. Fictions, however, are also passionately defended as highly valuable and even declared to be the basis of the law (Kelsen).
Kristin Albrecht shows, on the basis of a historical and comparative legal analysis, that one does not encounter "the legal fiction" in law, but three different kinds: fictional assumptions, fictive persons, and fictive legal institutes. She develops these types with philosophical thoroughness, unravelling whether there is something that makes them either troubling or "beneficial and useful" (Blackstone) instead.