The Supreme Labor Court in Nazi Germany: A Jurisprudential Analysis

Abstract

This book deals with a number of subjects: labor law, class conflict, Nazi Germany, Jews, jurisdiction and judicial reasoning, among others. Yet none of these forms its centerpiece. Rather, at issue here is the autonomy of the judicial process embracing the following complex of questions: What kinds of societal conflicts are molded into judicially cognizable disputes? What forces account for the exclusion/inclusion of certain conflicts from/in the judicial process? What principles underlie the process of transforming conflicts into disputes to be adjudicated by courts? How does the process of attempted resolution of these disputes by judges differ from that applied by other societal agents? What are the material (including legitimation-generating) consequences of judicial--as opposed to non-judicial--dispute-resolution? Does the character of the process change over time? Is its scope restricted or expanded over time in connection with shifts between its authority and that of other dispute-resolvers?

The major jurisprudential concern lies in confronting the latitude which the statutes, precedents and fact patterns allowed the judges with that of which they actually availed themselves. To determine whether some measure of analytical or political coherence or uniformity attaches to the limits which these three sets of structuring elements imposed on the decisions (or which the court imposed on itself) constitutes the primary task of the case analysis.

This work thus deals with the position within the social division of labor occupied by (private, civil law) courts in capitalist societies. Among these it examines exclusively Nazi Germany, which is a test case of judicial autonomy insofar as it might be expected that, given its anti-liberal posturing and partial revolution, it would constitute one extreme of restricted judicial autonomy. That the book deals only with labor law derives from considerations of manageability, not fungibility, of subject matter: for in view of the overriding role that the suppression of the labor movement played throughout the course of Nazi rule, labor-capital conflicts and their juridical transformation into judicially cognizable disputes assumed a special significance.

Errata for "The Supreme Labor Court in Nazi Germany"

Page VII 3rd line from bottom: “german” should be “German”

Keywords: Nazi Germany, labor law, courts, judicial autonomy, judicial reasoning, Jewish litigants, labor courts, legal positivism, rule of law, Rechtsstaat, plant community