Law and Fiction in the Weimar Republic: In memoriam John White

This article argues that much intellectual life of the Weimar Republic is marked by a reaction against the experience of functional differentiation of society, and an attempt to preserve the purity of functional spheres of society. Exemplified in the work of Karl Kraus and Carl Schmitt, this is especially evident in analyses of language and law, where this endeavour is construed as a rejection of the fictionalization of linguistic communication and legal analysis. On this basis, this article addresses the legal theory of the Weimar era as paradigmatic for the inability of legal inquiry to construct a free-standing ground for law’s authority.