ABSTRACT
The Federal Republic has been shaped by processes of ‘learning from catastrophes’ (Schmidt 1987), such as the breakdown of the Weimar Republic, National Socialist rule in 1933-45, and the collapse of the political, economic and social order in 1945. The National Socialist State in the period up to 1939 was notorious for its dual structure, i.e. the co-existence of relative predictability of the legal system in most economic affairs and unpredictability in almost all other aspects of political and social life. That dual structure was increasingly superseded by a totalitarian regime during World War II. The primacy of National Socialist politics over the law stands in great contrast to the legal structure of the Federal Republic. The ‘founding fathers’ of the Federal Republic’s constitution placed major emphasis on the formation of a constitutional State, the independence of the judiciary, judicial review, and the establishment of a powerful Federal Constitutional Court. The effects could not have been more dramatic: the rule of law, the institutionalization of the Constitutional Court as the guardian of the constitution and a ‘law-and court-minded people’ (Conradt 2001: 228) have replaced the unpredictability inherent in Germany in the 1933-45 period.
