ABSTRACT
In a number of works, Robert Alexy has analysed the problem of judicial weighing and balancing. The focus of Alexy's analysis is on the weighing of legal principles as expressed in the German Constitution by the catalogue of fundamental rights. To elucidate the structure of weighing and balancing, Alexy introduces mathematical weight formulas. At the end of the 1960s, two young men committed an assault on a depot of ammunition and weapons belonging to the German military defence. They stole weapons and ammunition from the depot. The third man, called W, was 24 years old at the time of the committal of the crime. During W's imprisonment, however, the Lebach murders had received great attention in German media. The Subsumption Formula represents a scheme which works according to the rules of logic; the Weight Formula represents a scheme which works according to the rules of arithmetic.
