Bernd Rüthers

Bernd Rüthers (born July 12, 1930 in Dortmund) is a German jurist.

Biography

Bernd Rüthers studied economics and law in Münster, focusing on labor law, the philosophy of law and legal methodology. He passed his two state law examinations and received his doctorate from the University of Munster in 1958 with a thesis on strikes and the constitution. From 1961 to 1963, he was assistant to the management of Daimler-Benz AG in Stuttgart. In 1968, he habilitated with Hans Brox on the "unlimited interpretation" of private law during the National Socialist era.

From 1967 to 1971, Rüthers was a professor at the Free University of Berlin and director of the Institute for Sociology of Law and Research on Legal Statistics. He was a founding member of the Notgemeinschaft für eine freie Universität (Emergency Association for a Free University) and a member of the Board of Trustees of the FU Berlin (1968–1971). This was followed by a professorship in civil law and legal theory at the University of Konstanz. He also received calls to Darmstadt, Bielefeld, Augsburg, Trier and twice Münster. He remained in Konstanz until his retirement in 1998, continuing to hold interdisciplinary seminars and lectures on the philosophy of law until 2010.

From 1967 to 1972, Rüthers was a member of the Labor Law Advisory Group to the Federal Executive Committee of the DGB. From 1970 to 1977, he was a member of the Federal Government's Labor Code Commission. From 1976 to 1989, he was also a judge at the Stuttgart Higher Regional Court. In addition, he taught philosophy of law for eight years as a guest lecturer at the Handelshochschule, later the University of St. Gallen. From 1986 to 1998, Rüthers was a member of the Permanent Deputation of the German Jurists' Conference, and in 1986/87 and 1998 he was a Fellow at the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study. From 1991 to 1996, he was Rector of the University of Konstanz. Several times member of university and state evaluation commissions (University of Bern, University of Vienna, State of Saxony, Max Planck Society). From 2000 to 2006, he was Chairman of the University Council of the Weingarten University of Education. From 1996 to 2014, he was a board member of the Stiftung Demoskopie Allensbach. He has been emeritus since 1998.

Rüthers has been married to the Rhaeto-Romanic poet Tresa Rüthers-Seeli since 1962. Their daughter Monica Rüthers teaches Eastern European history at the University of Hamburg.

Writings

Rüthers' main areas of interest in research and teaching are labor law, the philosophy of law, legal methodology, recent legal history, the comparison of the legal structures of political, especially totalitarian systems, law and worldview, and the economic control functions of law. He has written 50 monographs and about 400 essays on these subjects.

Rüthers became known with his 1968 habilitation thesis Die unbegrenzte Auslegung - Zum Wandel der Privatrechtsordnung im Nationalsozialismus, the first methodological analysis of the application of law in the Third Reich. Later, he dealt in particular with the biographies of renowned National Socialist and GDR jurists. In the course of his collaboration on a legal comparison between the FRG and the GDR in the Materialien zur Lage der Nation ("Materials on the State of the Nation") in 1972, he expanded his field of research to include the topic of Recht und Juristen im Wechsel der politischen Systeme ("Law and jurists in the change of political systems"). Based on his experience of the reinterpretations of entire legal systems in the NS state and in the SED state, Rüthers critically examined the interpretive theory and practice of the judiciary and jurisprudence in the recent German past and present (BAG, BGH, BVerfG). This led to a lively discussion of methods, especially of his thesis that "questions of method are questions of constitution". He concludes from this a creeping change, a "secret revolution" of the Federal Republic from a constitutional state to a "judge's state". In his opinion, the highest sources of law in practice are no longer the constitution and the laws, but the final decisions of the highest courts.

For his services ("leadership") in this field, he was made an honorary member by the American Society for Legal History. Rüthers participated in the evaluation of the six Max Planck Institutes of Law, the law faculties in Bern and Vienna, and in the government commission of the state of Saxony for the expansion of the state universities.

From 1984 to 2015, Rüthers lectured twice a year at the German Judicial Academy Trier/Wustrau. His topics were "Law and Jurists in the Change of Totalitarian Political Systems" and "Did the Legal Perversions in the Two German Dictatorships Have a Face? - Legal Organizers of Ideological Legal Reinterpretations".

Rüthers' students include Martin Henssler, President of the German Lawyers' Conference in Cologne; Karl-Georg Loritz, Professor of Civil and Tax Law in Bayreuth; Christian Fischer, Professor of Civil Law, Labor Law, Civil Procedure Law and Legal Theory in Jena; and Clemens Höpfner, Professor of Civil Law, Labor Law, Corporate Law and Legal Theory in Münster.

Works

• Streik und Verfassung (1960)
• Die unbegrenzte Auslegung (1968)
• Arbeitsrecht und politisches System (1972)
• Tarifautonomie im Umbruch? Arbeitgeberverband der Metallindustrie (1977)
• Universität und Gesellschaft – Thesen zu einer Entfremdung (1980)
• Wir denken die Rechtsbegriffe um. Interfrom (1985)
• Rechtsordnung und Wertordnung. Zur Ethik und Ideologie im Recht (1986)
• Entartetes Recht. Rechtslehren und Kronjuristen im Dritten Reich (1989)
• Carl Schmitt im Dritten Reich (1989)
• Das Ungerechte an der Gerechtigkeit (1991)
• Ideologie und Recht im Systemwechsel. Ein Beitrag zur Ideologieanfälligkeit geistiger Berufe (1992)
• Beschäftigungskrise und Arbeitsrecht (1996)
• Zeitgeist und Recht (1997)
• Rechtstheorie: Begriff, Geltung und Anwendung des Rechts (1999)
• Die Arbeitsgesellschaft im Umbruch (2000)
• Geschönte Geschichten – Geschonte Biographien. Sozialisationskohorten in Wendeliteraturen (2001)
• Toleranz in einer Gesellschaft im Umbruch (2005)
• Verräter, Zufallshelden oder Gewissen der Nation? Facetten des Widerstandes in Deutschland (2008)
• Die einsamen Außenseiter. Deutscher Widerstand im Lichte des wechselnden Zeitgeistes (2010)
• Die heimliche Revolution vom Rechtsstaat zum Richterstaat. Verfassung und Methoden (2016)
• "Methodenfragen als Verfassungsfragen." In: Rechtstheorie 40 (2009), pp. 253–83.

References

• Axel Birk, "Der kritische Rationalismus und die Rechtswissenschaft. Bernd Rüthers und Karl-Heinz Fezer – ein Ausgangspunkt, unterschiedliche Folgerungen," Rechtstheorie 48 (2017), pp. 43–75.
• Eric Hilgendorf, Recht und Weltanschauung – Bernd Rüthers als Rechtstheoretiker. Konstanz, 2001.
• Thomas Hoeren, Zivilrechtliche Entdecker. München 2001, pp. 317–73.
• Matthias Jestaedt, "Bernd Rüthers zum 90. Geburtstag". In: JuristenZeitung (JZ) 75 (14), (2020), pp. 742–43, doi:10.1628/jz-2020-0243
• Thomas Pierson, "Methode und Zivilrecht bei Bernd Rüthers". In: Joachim Rückert, Ralf Seinecke (eds.): Methodik des Zivilrechts – von Savigny bis Teubner. Baden-Baden, 2012, pp. 326–49.

External links

• Works by Bernd Rüthers at German National Library
• Works by Bernd Rüthers at Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek