Gustav Radbruch was a German legal scholar and politician. He served as Minister of Justice of Germany during the early Weimar period. Radbruch is also regarded as one of the most influential legal philosophers of the 20th century.
Niklas Luhmann was a German sociologist, philosopher of social science, and a prominent thinker in systems theory, who is considered one of the most important social theorists of the 20th century.
Philosophy of law is a branch of philosophy that examines the nature of law and law's relationship to other systems of norms, especially ethics and political philosophy. It asks questions like "What is law?", "What are the criteria for legal validity?", and "What is the relationship between law and morality?" Philosophy of law and jurisprudence are often used interchangeably, though jurisprudence sometimes encompasses forms of reasoning that fit into economics or sociology.
Legal positivism is a school of thought of analytical jurisprudence developed largely by legal philosophers during the 18th and 19th centuries, such as Jeremy Bentham and John Austin. While Bentham and Austin developed legal positivist theory, empiricism provided the theoretical basis for such developments to occur. The most prominent legal positivist writer in English has been H. L. A. Hart, who, in 1958, found common usages of "positivism" as applied to law to include the contentions that:
Friedrich Hermann Hund was a German physicist from Karlsruhe known for his work on atoms and molecules.
Georg Jellinek was an Austrian public lawyer and was considered to be "the exponent of public law in Austria“.
Julius Binder was a German philosopher of law. He is principally known as an opponent of legal positivism, and for having remained as an active scholar during the 1930s in Nazi Germany who did not speak out against the prevailing government of that time.
Gertrude Lübbe-Wolff is a German academic and senior judge. She sits on the second senate of the Bundesverfassungsgericht, having succeeded Jutta Limbach in this position in April 2002.
Glenn Warren Most is an American classicist and comparatist originating from the US, but also working in Germany and Italy.
Johann Stephan Pütter was a German law lecturer and publicist. He was professor of law at the university of Göttingen from 1746 until his death. He exerted great influence on the law institutions of his time. His principal work is Historische Entwicklung der heutigen Staatsverfassung des Deutschen Reichs.
The Radbruch formula is a theory of law which was first formulated in a 1946 essay by the German law professor and politician Gustav Radbruch. According to the theory, a judge who encounters a conflict between a statute and what he perceives as just, has to decide against applying the statute if – and only if – the legal concept behind the statute in question seems either "unbearably unjust" or in "deliberate disregard" of human equality before the law.
Wilhelm Ebel was a scholar of Early Germanic law, known for editing and translating a number of law codes. During the Third Reich he was a committed Nazi, with military, administrative, and research service in the SS, and his academic career was interrupted by imprisonment after the end of World War II.
Markus Mühling is a Protestant systematic theologian and philosopher of religion whose work focuses largely on the doctrine of God, eschatology, the atonement and the dialogue between the natural sciences and theology.
Horst Schüler-Springorum was a German Professor of Jurisprudence. The focus of his work was on Criminal justice.
The Göttingen Faculty of Theology is the divinity school at the University of Göttingen, officially denominated the "United Theological Departments" but commonly referred to as the "Theological Faculty" . It was instituted at the foundation of the University, in 1737, along with the three other original faculties of Law, Medicine, and Philosophy. Over the centuries, the Göttingen Faculty of Theology has been home to many influential scholars and movements, including the rise of historical criticism, Ritschlianism, the History of Religions School, and Dialectical Theology. Its members were also involved in the Göttingen School of History.
Karl Engisch was a German jurist and a Philosopher of Law. He was described by Hans Joachim Hirsch as one of the "outstanding theorists of criminal justice of the [twentieth] century".
Alexander Somek is an Austrian legal scholar.
Walter Hinck was a German Germanist and writer. He was professor of German literature at the University of Cologne from 1964 to 1987.
A legal norm is a binding rule or principle, or norm, that organisations of sovereign power promulgate and enforce in order to regulate social relations. Legal norms determine the rights and duties of individuals who are the subjects of legal relations within the governing jurisdiction at a given point in time. Competent state authorities issue and publish basic aspects of legal norms through a collection of laws that individuals under that government must abide by, which is further guaranteed by state coercion. There are two categories of legal norms: normativity, which regulates the conduct of people, and generality, which is binding on an indefinite number of people and cases. Diplomatic and legislative immunity refers to instances where legal norms are constructed to be targeted towards a minority and are specifically only binding on them, such as soldiers and public officials.
Jens Hacke is a German political scientist and author.
