Private Equity, Social Inequity

German Judges React to Inflation, 1914–24

Datos Bibliográficos

ID9645692
AutoresMichael Hughes (0000-0003-2169-3451, autor de correspondencia), Michael L Hughes
Año1983
Volumen16
Número1
Páginas76-94
Fecha de publicación1983-03-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaCentral European History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0008-9389 • E-ISSN: 1569-1616
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s000893890001089x
OpenAlexW2149314761
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas9

Responding to a lawyer's impassioned plea for “justice” for his client, a great judge supposedly remarked, “We deal with the law here, not with justice.” This apocryphal comment sums up a fundamental dilemma: should courts simply apply the law as written or seek out “justice” in every case? Before World War I, German jurists chose the former approach. For them the Rechtsstaat (variously, the just state or state rooted in law) was to be secured by establishing a legal code covering all contingencies and then applying this code exactly to each case. Only thus could individuals and their rights be protected from caprice or arbitrariness. Yet between 1914 and 1924 the German judiciary jettisoned this concept and tacitly redefined the Rechtsstaat to make the judges' conception of equity, rather than statutes, the ultimate guarantee of justice

Arbitrariness · Economic Justice · Equity (law · German · Law and economics · Plea · Political science · Sociology · State (computer science · Statute · European Political History Analysis · Historical Economic and Legal Thought · Law · Legal and Social Philosophy · Philosophy