ABSTRACT
English thinking, ingrained in the Common Law tradition, is oriented on individual institutions, ranging from the Crown to the other institutions in the land upon which, concrete powers are conferred. Germany’s constitutional and institutional development has been fundamentally shaped by her decentral structures which have their roots in early medieval history. In Germany, the question of how to regulate the executive function of local government has long been a problem both conceptually and institutionally. The concept of the State developed in Germany with the rise of the absolutist territorial rulers for whom Roman Law was a useful legal expedient for construing the State as a self-standing legal and as opposed to late-feudal institutionalism. In Britain’s Common Law tradition judge-made law as a time-honoured body of judicial precedents has been prevalent as the source of law, while parliamentary statute law was rather the exception. The development in Britain which has produced divergence can be explained by a constellation of factors.
