Bernhard Schlink

Bald hundert Jahre nach Veröffentlichung der ersten Monographie zum Thema »Aufklärung« und exakt fünfzig Jahre nach Erscheinen des einschlägigen, mit einem Umfang von nicht weniger als einhundert ... mehr

Der Schwerpunkt dieses Hefts versammelt drei Beiträge zur Globalgeschichte des politischen Liberalismus. In transnational vergleichender Perspektive macht Harry Liebersohn ... mehr

Interpretations of legal norms are abstract and general, as are legal norms themselves. They are if-then-statements about factual constellations and their legal consequences. Unlike scientific if-then-statements which predict what is expected to happen, legal if-then-statements stipulate what must or must not happen. But like scientific hypotheses, they cover an infinite universe and cannot be verified, only falsified. Therefore, there are no rules that have only to be followed to discover the right hypothesis or the right interpretation. That gives the context of discovery its characteristic freedom. In the context of justification, the discovery has to be tested against the potentially falsifying instances. Scientific hypotheses are falsified by consensus about how to understand reality. Legal interpretations are falsified by consensus about what the text of the norm says, about what the legislature intended, and about the compatibility of the interpretation with the rest of the legal system. The falsifying instances cannot reduce the competing interpretations to one. Since there can only be one decision, judges must choose. mehr

Hegel’s Philosophy of Right is often misconceived as a normative theory prescribing how the state ought to be. While it is indeed a normative theory, its primary concern is to elucidate how the state must be understood to reveal its rationality. Hegel does not dictate, for instance, that the state should have a monarch; rather, he explores how, if a state includes a monarch, this role can and must be comprehended as a rational component of the state. He demonstrates how law, morality, family, and society, as they really exist, can be perceived as rational configurations. He also examines the extent to which each of these entities embodies rationality and identifies the point at which the rationality of one configuration transitions to the next – culminating in the state. mehr