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1. Definition The history of political thought uses the term  social contract (German  Staatsvertrag or  Gesellsschaftsvertrag, French  contrat social) for the contract that forms the basis for the emergence of the state. As a rule, the concept of a social contract is closely associated with the early modern model of natural law, according to which human beings live originally in the state of nature, which they abandon with the social contract in favor of the  status civilis (civil state), that is, life within the state. Diethelm Klippel 2. Absolutist theory …

1. Concept The estatic society and authority systems of Europe in the Middle Ages and early modern period (Estates of the realm) recognized numerous gradations of legal capacity and limitations on freedom of action, some of which would only be abolished in the 19th century. These reached the extreme of a condition of personal unfreedom pertaining to certain persons and groups, particularly serfs and slaves (Serfdom; Slavery). A plethora of other specific “unfreedoms” applied in social, …

1. Definition and scope Military law, disregarding the various contemporary usages of the term, may be understood as all law that pertains to the military, especially the legal norms that govern its inner composition, administration, and conflicts, as well as its external relations with the population and state and its conduct in military confrontations with other states. With respect to the history of the term, military law (German:  Militärrecht) was increasingly used after 1800 to translate the Latin term ius militare. Previously, the general term was the “law of war” (German:  K…

The term “sumptuary laws” has since at least the late 18th century denoted legal provisions intended to limit luxury and more generally consumption, and hence to regulate the behaviors associated with them.1. Provisions and scopeAs a corpus of early modern legal sources (although similar provisions had certainly been made in classical antiquity and the Middle Ages), sumptuary laws defy survey in terms of quantity and variety [3]; [9]. Provisions are contained in broader laws (e.g. police ordinances [Police (political order)] and territorial law codes) and in …

1. ConceptThe state of nature (Latin  status naturalis, German  Naturzustand,  Stand der Natur; French  état naturel) was understood as the state of human existence outwith or prior to the creation of the state ( societas civilis,  “civil society” in the  status civilis,  “civil state”). The conception of such a state of nature was a key component of the early modern theory of natural law (Natural law). According to the model developed in that theory, the state of nature was brought to an end by the social contract (or contracts) that …

1. Introduction 1.1. TerminologyPhilosophy of law (Latin  philosophia iuris; French  philosophie du droit; German  Rechtsphilosophie) is understood to be a subdiscipline of jurisprudence and philosophy that is dedicated to fundamental philosophical questions about law and the state and the investigation of certain legal problems from a philosophical perspective. The term natural law (Latin  ius naturae or  naturale; French  droit de la nature; German  Naturrecht) designates a complex of legal norms that are presumed to be valid independent of positive…

1. Definition The term juridification (alternatively, “judicialisation”; German Verrechtlichung) has been used since the early 20th century to describe the process of the expansion of legal structures to areas of life that had not previously been regulated by law, or the intensification and increasingly detailed nature of existing law; it further refers in a general sense to the growing importance of legal structures. The term Verrechtlichung was coined by Hugo Sinzheimer in 1919 and introduced to scholarly discourse by the dissertation of Otto Kirchheimer in 1928 [22. 354]; [8. 5…

1. Foundations of Catholic and Protestant ecclesiastical lawThe ecclesiastical law of the early modern period is characterized by the loss of the religious unity that shaped the Middle Ages. In a revolutionary departure [2. 503] following the Lutheran Reformation in 1517, alongside the law of the Roman Catholic Church, summarized in the  Corpus Iuris Canonici, there now stood a different basic understanding of the role of law in the church. The recognition of Protestant teaching as having equal rights (in the 1555 Peace of Augsburg, 1555) and the…

1. General 1.1. OverviewThe term emancipation, which exists in all European languages, comes from Roman private law (Latin emancipatio), and originally meant release from the patria potestas (Parental rights and obligations). The concept had an extraordinary career from the dawn of the early modern period, though the original family law sense survived in jurisdiction long into the 19th century in Europe. While outside legal usage it initially had an overtone of moral egoism, it increasingly became a subject of reflection…

Since antiquity “asylum” (Greek ásylon) has meant a place of refuge where refugees could find protection. Under the influence of medieval legal theory, in the course of the early modern period today’s understanding of the right of asylum developed; it distinguishes between the right of asylum as the sum of legal norms that regulate the field of law and the subjective right of asylum of a  refugee. In the early modern period, the development of an ecclesiastical right of asylum, a secular right, and an international right overlapped. 1. Ecclesiastical right of asylum The ecclesiastical r…

1. Definition and contextsThe concept of justice and what it means is one of the fundamental problems of the philosophy of law and of conceptions of law in every age; this question is also closely tied to the religious or theological notion of the justice of the gods or God (God, concepts of; Theodicy). The number of answers is correspondingly endless, particularly in the early modern period. The question of historical change in the concept of justice seems even more difficult to answer. Only a few…

Freedom of migration is understood to be the right to leave, initially, the territory of a ruler and then - after the formation of states over the course of the early modern period - a national territory for the purpose of establishing permanent residency in a different area. Only after the rise of the modern sovereign state (Sovereignty) with clearly defined national boundaries can one draw a clear distinction between freedom of emigration and freedom of movement. The history of freedom of migr…

1. DefinitionFreedom of movement is the right to stay (temporarily) and reside (permanently) freely and unimpeded by the state anywhere within its territory. Freedom of movement thus represents the inner-state counterpart to freedom of migration. A clear distinction between these two types of freedom developed over the course of the emergence of the modern sovereign state (Sovereignty) with precisely delimited national borders (Boundary). Much of the history of freedom of movement thus coincides …

Both law and ethics formulate cultural behavioral norms. The differentiation or distinction between these areas is thus a fundamental problem of juristic and philosophical thought. Usually, the view is taken that pre-state societies had not yet separated legal, ethical, and religious norms from one another; this did not happen until after the Enlightenment [9. 2 f.].Although the question of the distinction between natural law, ethics, and state law had already been raised in the Middle Ages (by Thomas Aquinas among others), it took on new and, in …

1. ConceptPersonality rights are understood today as subjective rights resting upon and deriving from the essence of the human person. On the one hand, as human rights, they guarantee the recognition of elementary human needs by the state (Humankind, human being), while on the other, as a general right of personality and in the plural as special rights of personality, they forbid in civil law unauthorized infringements by fellow citizens into certain protected personal areas (e.g. private sphere, name, likeness).The history of personality rights is difficult to discern f…

1. Introduction and general history 1.1. Definition and early terminological historyThe word “psychology” comes from the Greek ( psychḗ, originally “breath,” “soul”; i.e. “lore of the soul”). The modern empirical science of psychology established its first research institute at Leipzig in 1879, but from a philosophical perspective, European psychology (as a study of the properties of the soul) began with the work of the Presocratic philosophers in the 5th century BCE.The Croatian Humanist Marcus Marulus (Marulić) is said to have written a treatise (now lost) entitled Psichio…

1. Concept The general theory of state (German  allgemeine Staatslehre), as a sub-discipline of German jurisprudence, today treats fundamental questions of the theory of the state independently of the state law or constitutional law of any particular state. The term emerged in the 19th century, initially as a synonym, then as a successor to  allgemeines Staatsrecht (general government law), which in turn was a translation of ius publicum universale, which had emerged late in the 17th century as a part of natural law [11. 291 ff.]. Allgemeines Staatsrecht was thus also seen a…

1. DefinitionThe concept of human dignity (Latin, dignitas hominis; French,  dignité de l'homme; German, Menschenwürde) is considered difficult to grasp; it is said to be beset by “problems and paradoxes” [7], by ambiguity, and by “notorious indefiniteness” [14. 17]. Beyond the claim that it is a quality of humankind that warrants recognition, its definition and historical development have depended on prevailing conceptions of what it is to be human (Humanity) and the concept of dignity. Although a comprehensive monograph on the his…