Nils Jansen
Gesetz, Politik und Wissenschaft
Published in German.
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- 10.1628/acp-2025-0006
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German private law has been framed as a domain of politically neutral legal reasoning, yet a closer historical analysis sheds doubts on this assumption. This study explores how legal doctrine - from the early days of the Historical School, through the Wertungsjurisprudenz until controversies in the 1980ies and 90ies - sought to maintain the illusion of an autonomous system of private law. By examining the evolution of private autonomy as a foundational principle and the tensions between the binding codification, judicial creativity and the authority of academic doctrine, the work sheds light on the methodological challenges of contemporary private law theory.