Continental Traditions in Jurisprudence

Zielgruppe: Studierende des Schwerpunktbereichs 1a; students from a non-German legal-cultural background.

Inhalt: In these lectures we will give a first grounding in the history of the continental European tradition of legal philosophy as distinct from, but connected to, Anglo-Scandinavian thinkers. We will try to make the case for continental traditions and show that they follow significantly different strategies than those employed in the common law world. The focus of these lectures will, however, not be on recreating the past, but on discussing current problems. We will look at specific topics and work out, together with the participants, how the efforts and failures of important legal thinkers may help us in better understanding the eternal problems of law. First, we will provide a grounding in the continental debates on traditional
questions of jurisprudence, e.g.

• the possibility of an ultimate foundation of law
• the role of morals and/or justice in law
• the question of authority

Second, however, we will focus on the idea of a structural analysis of legal orders, as the more recent continental debate has shown more fruitful results in the daily application of theory to actual problems of the law, like

• interpretation of law
• logic in law
• legal argumentation
• application (legal subsumtion)
• conflicts of norm
• derogation
• ‘gaps’ in the law

By looking at texts in their context and in their application to concrete problems of law, participants should be enabled to start seeing the structural problems of legal philosophy and argue their theoretical case, rather than learn a series of facts about past legal philosophers. Participants will be encouraged to analyse the theoretical dimensions of seemingly simple legal problems.

Material: Das Material finden Sie auf Ilias-UniFreiburg. / You can download learning material on Ilias-UniFreiburg