Doppelte Körper im Recht

The idea of the 'double body' was something that Roman jurists were already familiar with and which found its footing on the premise that between the whole and the sum of its parts there lies a fundamental difference. The relation of unity and diversity has started attracting interest again because nations have begun to hand over considerable amounts of their sovereignty to outlying institutions. The metaphor also applies to political bodies, for example when the talk is of corporations or 'non-state bodies', because new legal orders are constantly emerging within progressive trans-nationalization. But do such partial orders let themselves be understood in terms of unity? The idea of the 'double body' has once again been taken up by the German Historical School within its considerations of the 'structural similarity' of private and public associations, of state and non-state bodies. The result is that its 'politics' have formed an important link in a long chain which reaches from Roman jurisprudence to modern pluralism theories.