Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Integrative Research Institute Law & Society (LSI)

Criticism is – especially according to Kant – a classic topos of scientific methodology. It refers to reflection on the conditions of validity and possibility of real objects, self-questioning not only with regard to internal consistency, but also to the limits of particular cognitive abilities, and finally reflection on the intertwining of knowledge and interest. While many traditional disciplines developed critical research, this has been absent from jurisprudence for a very long time or has primarily taken the form of external, “merely political” criticism (free law school, legal criticism of the 1970s). An “immanent critique” would have taken the autonomy of law seriously, namely its specific difference from ethics, morality, and politics. The aim of this research focus is to revive legal criticism from a perspective that takes the legal form seriously and transforms today's fundamentally “uncritical” jurisprudence in parts into a reflective discipline that removes the recognized limits of its own cognitive abilities in its own grammar – in the triple Hegelian sense. A paradigm of such a reflexive turn could be the critique of the assumptions of freedom that are recognisable in various areas of law.