Warum ausgerechnet keine Rechtsgeschichte?

Mommsens Block!

Abstract

Legal history is an indispensable discipline within the study of law! According to Theodor Mommsen, one of the most influential persons in German jurisprudence, it is necessary that history and law converge in order to allow an insight into how law functions. To explore the reasons and functions of older legal orders which paved the way for modern law means to understand the past of law as integrating part of its presence and future. Therefore the knowledge of how law developed is a condition for understanding today’s law, implementing law, and further developing of law. Because a jurist is trained to think not only de lege lata but also de lege ferenda, he badly needs a precise memory of the brilliance as well as the deficiencies of former norms and sentences. Without experience no insight! If a lawyer is not aware of former solutions of legal problems and their dubious nature he ceases to be a member of the scientific community. Legal history thereby can also be a help to get rid of the past and to set out for new lands.