Law of the thumb
The law of the thumb was a term in use since the 16th century for the feud exercised in violation of the Eternal Peace of 1495 .
The old Germanic law already knew the right to feud. It could be averted by a court-determined atonement (compositio) to the injured.
In the late Middle Ages , the right to feud developed into a form of self-help that was only permitted on a subsidiary basis in relation to judicial protection . It was further constrained by certain formalities such as the special prior notice as well as the prohibition of feuding on certain days of the week and against certain people. The complaint mirror as the most important legal book of the late Middle Ages already frowned upon any form of the law of the thumb.
With the Eternal Peace at the Reichstag in Worms of 1495, the feud was forbidden. Since then, the law of the thumb has in particular referred to violations of the ban on feuding by raids by the nobility . In his novella Michael Kohlhaas , Heinrich von Kleist addresses the problem of overcoming the law of the thumb in a civilizational way.
In modern constitutional states the state's monopoly of force applies . The law of the thumb describes colloquially there a form of vigilante justice bypassing the state jurisdiction .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Law of fist and feud law . In: E. Götzinger: Reallexicon of the German antiquities. Leipzig 1885.
- ↑ Hellmuth Karasek : The return of the law of the thumb. Hamburger Abendblatt , January 17, 2015.
