Paul Laband

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Paul Laband

Paul Laband (born May 24, 1838 near Breslau , † March 23, 1918 in Strasbourg ) was a German teacher of constitutional law .

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Paul Laband studied at the University of Breslau , the Ruprecht-Karls-University of Heidelberg and the University of Berlin law . During his studies he became a member of the Arminia Breslau fraternity in 1855 . He was of Jewish origin and was baptized in 1857. Laband completed his habilitation in Heidelberg in 1861 at the Ruperto Carola with his habilitation thesis on German law , with the title Contributions to the customer of the Schwabenspiegel . The Schwabenspiegel is a medieval legal book . From then on, Laband initially worked as a private lecturer in Heidelberg. From 1864 he was associate professor in Königsberg , from 1866 full professor, in 1872 he became professor at the University of Strasbourg , where he stayed until his retirement due to inclination . In May 1880 Laband was appointed a member of the State Council for Alsace-Lorraine . Paul Laband also became a member of the First Chamber of the State Parliament .

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His first independently published works were in the field of Germanistic legal source criticism, including in 1869 his main work in the area of ​​internal legal history, the property lawsuits based on Saxon legal sources of the Middle Ages . In addition, he dealt extensively with commercial law , from 1864 as co-editor of the journal for all commercial law . Initiated by the establishment of the North German Confederation in 1866 and the ongoing legal discussion about the Prussian constitutional conflict, Laband turned to constitutional law.

His debut in constitutional law was then the treatise The Budget Law According to the Provisions of the Prussian Constitutional Charter (Berlin 1870), which was devoted to the constitutional conflict. Although Laband did not follow the gap theory advocated by Otto von Bismarck , he nonetheless came up with the justification of his approach with the help of the double legal concept developed in this publication: the distinction between formal and material law.

Laband stuck to constitutional law. His comprehensive treatise Das Finanzrecht des Deutschen Reichs (1873) laid the foundation for his main work Das Staatsrecht des Deutschen Reichs (1876–1882, 4 volumes; 5th and last edition 1911). In 1886 he founded the archive for public law with Felix Stoerk . In 1896, together with Otto Liebmann, he founded the Deutsche Juristen-Zeitung , which he initially published together with the Reich judge Melchior Stenglein and the lawyer Hermann Staub .

Laband's work in the field of public law was strongly influenced by his preoccupation with private law issues. He was the first to develop a legal method in constitutional law, as it had already been developed for civil law, which was free of political philosophical thoughts and was based on formal-logical principles. In his influential textbook on constitutional law, in particular, he developed constitutional law from the ideas of legal positivism . Although Laband was not the first representative of positivism in constitutional law, the founder of the doctrine was rather Carl Friedrich von Gerber , but he developed the doctrine in such a way that Laband's work made it the dominant opinion in German constitutional law .

Criticism of his methodology is that it neglects the teleological interpretation as an interpretation method that asks about the purpose of a law. His doctrine of fundamental rights stated that these only limited state power, but that they do not have the character of a subjective right . From today's point of view, this is considered incorrect, but it corresponded to the legal understanding of the time and still influenced the highest court rulings of the Reichsgericht at the time of the Weimar Republic .

The criticism of his methodology often falls short insofar as he wants to keep the ideology of Vormärz and natural law strictly out of legal considerations, but on the other hand bases all considerations of constitutional law on the “ monarchical principle ”. In this respect, there are also interpretations that are loyal to the monarchy or conservative, where the imperial constitution would have created more leeway. On the other hand, its rigor in the systematic implementation of this constitutional principle also leads to collisions with the realpolitik of the Reich and its leadership interests.

Paul Laband's work cannot be grasped without its contemporary historical and political framework. For almost 40 years he was part of the “Kaiser-Wilhelms-Universität” project in Strasbourg. The financially excellent new Reich University also served the political and cultural purpose of reintegrating Alsace-Lorraine into the Empire and reconciliation with the local population. His many years of committed work as a university lecturer is impressively documented in his lectures on constitutional law.

Laband was involved in the State Council of Alsace-Lorraine and took an essential part in the constitutional development of this so-called "Reichsland", which is also reflected in his writings.

Fonts

  • Contributions to the customer of the Schwabenspiegel. Berlin 1861
  • The Magdeburg-Breslau systematic law on lay judges. Berlin 1863
  • Jurassic Prutenorum. Koenigsberg 1866
  • Magdeburg legal sources. Koenigsberg 1869
  • Property lawsuits based on the Saxon legal sources of the Middle Ages. Koenigsberg 1869
  • The budget law according to the provisions of the Prussian constitution. Berlin 1871
  • The financial law of the German Reich. In: Hirths: Annalen. 1873
  • The constitutional law of the German Reich. 3 volumes. Laupp, Tübingen 1876–1882 (Vol. 3.2 published near Mohr, Freiburg (Breisgau))
  • Abridged representation of the constitutional law of the German Empire. In: Marquard: Handbook of Public Law of the Present. Tubingen 1883
  • The changes in the German constitution. Dresden 1895 ( digitized version )
  • The dispute over the succession to the throne in the Principality of Lippe. Berlin 1896 ( digitized version )
  • Lectures on constitutional law. Lectures on the history of state thought, state theory and constitutional history and German state law of the 19th century, held at the Kaiser Wilhelm University of Strasbourg 1872–1918. Edited and ed. by Bernd Schlueter. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-428-11219-9 .

literature

Web links

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  1. ^ Hugo Böttger (ed.): Directory of the old fraternity members according to the status of the winter semester 1911/12. Berlin 1912, p. 115.
  2. ↑ Werner Frotscher / Bodo Pieroth , Verfassungsgeschichte , 2nd edition, CH Beck, Munich 1999, Rn 446, 447.
  3. ↑ Cf. Bernd Schlüter, Reich Science: State Theory, State Theory and Science Policy in the German Empire using the example of the University of Strasbourg , Frankfurt a. M. 2004.
  4. ↑ See Paul Laband, Staatsrechtliche Vorlesungen , ed. v. Bernd Schlueter.
personal data
SURNAME Laband, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philologist, legal historian and constitutional law teacher
DATE OF BIRTH May 24, 1838
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH March 23, 1918
Place of death Strasbourg