A complex affair – German legal science around 1900

Volume 332 of the Studien zur europäischen Rechtsgeschichte now published

A growing differentiation in German jurisprudence is observable from the end of the 19th century onwards, a development evident, among other things, in the establishment of institutes as well as new chair designations, textbooks, and journals. A number of legal subdisciplines developed and became independent; even the established disciplines re-evaluated their aims and their self-conception. Moreover, there was a flurry of activity in the foundational subjects. Not only did legal philosophy, legal theory, and later legal sociology diverge from one another but an impressive plurality of opinions can be observed here as well. This raises the question of whether and in what way specific conceptions of law also developed within the discipline, for example, with regard to the nature of legal norms, their scope of application, norm-setters and norm structure.

The authors of this volume shed light on fundamental debates in the respective subdisciplines, thereby revealing the conditions under which a differentiated jurisprudence emerged.