ABSTRACT
Few facets of the Frankfurt School theorist Franz L. Neumann’s political and legal theory are as unfashionable today as his neo-Marxist account of the decline of classical formal law. Even sympathetic commentators concede that Neumann relied on an idealized and probably unrealistic portrayal of classical liberal jurisprudence, as well as an excessively functionalist interpretation of legal development.1 At times, Neumann indeed stressed the inexorable decay of modern law in a manner that obfuscates its key features at least as much as it helps make sense of them. Although Neumann sought to overcome the normative defi cits of traditional left-wing legal theory by ascribing an “ethical function” to the rule of law, even this facet of his theory always remained underdeveloped. Neumann never fully liberated himself from a Weberian-Marxist intellectual background that ultimately minimizes law’s immanent normative-and, more specifi cally, democratic-qualities.
