Rechtsbrüche

‘The legal world finds itself in a state of self-imposed immaturity.’ This was Rudolf Wiethölter’s assessment in 1968, which reflected his discomfort with the law. What help could the political society at that time, which wanted to implement democracy earnestly, expect from a form of law which was influenced by the authoritarian state of the 19th century? It was not possible to make the law relevant to the present and to understand it with other theories using the 19th century ideal of the ‘Juristen als solchen’, the jurist who focuses solely on applying the letter of the law rather than taking extra legal matters into account. The law needed to be clarified, with society needing to know what its rights were and with the law itself needing to understand itself.
What about the situation today? Has Germany, as a democratic constitutional and welfare state founded on its Basic Law, come to understand itself in terms of the law? How can the law open up access to politics? What is the state of critical jurisprudence? On the occasion of Rudolf Wiethölter’s 90th birthday, the appraisals of his concepts conducted by the contributions in this book avoid the cosiness and sentimentality adopted by most Festschriften by consistently focusing on his key works and re-evaluating them according to circumstances today, which makes clear that explaining the law requires a reconstruction of its promises and disappointments. Only then can the law understand why breaches of the law by reality can further its own development.