Formelle und materielle Rechtswidrigkeit als dogmatische Kategorien des öffentlichen Rechts

The concepts of formal and substantive unlawfullness are widely used in jurisprudence and case law, yet they are rarely defined or discussed in any detail. In this article, the author provides a fundamental examination of these ubiquitous terms and elaborates on their definitions. She demonstrates that, in their current usage, the categories have no dogmatic value; that is to say, no conclusions can be drawn about the consequence of errors based on whether an error is categorised as formal or substantive. Instead, the author proposes a different categorisation of errors: Responsibility errors, substantive errors, and formal errors.