Rechtsstaatsbegriffe im Dritten Reich

Among other things, the existing rule of law terminology of the German constitutional states of the 19th and 20th centuries came under fire from rule of law literature at the beginning of the Third Reich. This literature reduced the terminology to a negative and almost homogeneous caricature of the civil-liberal concept of the state governed by the rule of law. Nevertheless, the talk of a state governed by the rule of law did not cease. Christian Hilger describes the arguments given for and against the further use of the term 'rule of law'. In the main part of his study, he analyzes newly-formed terms used for the state governed by the rule of law, some of them created by relatively unknown authors, others by well-known authors such as for example Otto Kroellreutter, Carl Schmitt and Julius Binder. He concludes by categorizing these terms with regard to their common content, their potential functions as well as their basis in epistemology and political philosophy.