“Critical Legal Thought: An American-German Debate” An Introduction at the Occasion of Its Republication in the German Law Journal 25 Years Later

Abstract

The motivation and agenda of the German contributors to the “German-American Debate on Critical Legal Thought”, were not, and certainly could not, be uniform, neither within the American nor the German group of participants, let alone between Americans and Germans. It seemed nevertheless obvious at the time that we shared a number of concerns. Four seemed obvious and particularly important: Uneasiness, albeit for different reasons, with our respective mainstream traditions; a concern for social justice, albeit in different societies and with different priorities; the critique of our educational systems though they differed so markedly; an awareness of the discrepancies between the law on the books and the law in action which generated contextual studies and all sorts of “law and…” endeavors. Neither during the laborious preparations of the 1986 conference nor during the equally demanding publication process and not even with hindsight is it conceivable to identify comprehensively and exactly our communalities and differences. This is why we have decided to write separate introductions. Mine will proceed in three steps. The first is a reconstruction of German, more precisely: my own, motivation and agenda (A). The second step reproduces in the form of an essay the proposal submitted to the Volkswagen Foundation in 1985, the funding organization for the conference (B). The third summarizes much more briefly what I see as accomplishments and failures - and ensuing challenges (C).