ny’s words - “Auslegung” and “Fortbildung”, between interpretation in a narrow sense and the wider interpretation that led to new law (legal development).8 Twenty years later, borrowing the terminology of the social sciences, the English legal scholar Henry Sumner Maine (18221888) described the function of law in what he called progressive societies: “social necessities and social opinion are always more or less in advanced of Law” and the task of the administration of law was to come “near to the closing of the gap between them”.9 But how far could the court go to close this gap – through an expansive interpretation of rudimentary legislation or by waiting for the legislator to fill the gap? Here we see the tension between on the one hand, the duty of the court in all cases always to reach a decision whatever positive law there was, and on the other hand, the constitutional duty of the court to not transgress into the realm of the legislator.This tension created the idea of a modern praetor which was not bound to the political-methodological norms of legal interpretation or the political-constitutional norms of division of power.The problem was of course that the modern institution of Praetor hardly was to be found anywhere.Therefore, a twofold debate emerged, namely whether one should establish a praetor-like institution or whether one could interpret the existing legal and political system in such a way that it included the function of the Praetor, transported to the modern world. In the German literature of the early19th century both these strategies were chosen. In the heated debate about a possible new German civil code around1814the legal scholar Eduard Schrader (1779-1860) wrote a book called ”Die Prätorischen Edicte der Römer auf unsere Verhältnisse übertragen” (1815).10 Here Schrader distinguished between re cht swi s s e n scha f t al s j ur i st i sch e dok t r i n 182 8 Savigny, System des heutigen Römischen Rechts I (Berlin1840) § 50 (p. 322) cfr. §§ 32 sq there also discussing the wide forms of interpretation by the Roman lawyers. I do not enter into any debate about the character of this division by Savigny; see further Joachim Rückert, Idealismus, Jurisprudenz und Politik bei Friedrich Carl von Savigny (Ebelsbach1984) pp.348sq. and Stephan Meder,Missverstehen undVerstehen (Tübingen 2004) pp. 131 sq. 9 Henry Sumner Maine, Ancient Law(London 1861) pp. 24-30. 10 Eduard Schrader, Die Prätorischen Edicte der Römer auf unsere Verhältnisse übertragen: ein Hauptmittel unser Recht allmälich gut und volksmäßig zu bilden (Weimar 1815) §§9 sq. Schrader’s book is mentioned in the Romanist literature now and then (e.g. II
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