those legal issues that people as ordinary citizens could have a reasonable opinion about and those issues that were more technically complicated and required legal knowledge. Of course Savigny had already written about this important issue in Vom Beruf.11 For this second category (which comprised most of private law and procedural law) Schrader proposed a modern institute of Praetor in the form of a body of legal experts formally authorized to develop new law.The general form of its decisions was to be called “gemeine Bescheide” and should be addressed to the public. Equally, Savigny, in 1840, as we have just seen, acknowledging the often vague borders between legal interpretation and legal development, suggested the creation of a similar body of legal experts. Savigny underlined the cooperation between legal practitioners, legal science and state authorities, and he maintained that these authorities should not continue in the old political autocratic way producing new law without recognising the manner in which positive law comes into being. To merge these different understandings of law in one body would improve legal development.Thus he saw the possibility of making a body that in reality would be a modern counterpart to the Roman Praetor:“Zugleich wäre diese Einrichtung, bey gänzlicherVerschiedenheit der äußeren Form, dem innerenWesen nach ähnlich derjenigen Fortbildung, die im Römischen Recht durch das jährlich revidirte prätorische Edict bewirkt wurde“.12 This idea was suggested in pre-constitutional Prussia and could as such not be regarded as criticism of the lack of legal skills in democratic assemblies, but rather then of an inefficient bureaucracy.Turning to constitutional Norway we find many similar opinions. In the debate on the Constitutional Assembly on Eidsvoll (close to Oslo) in AprilMay 1814 such issues came to the surface. In the debate about the proposed Article 78 in the new Constitution the conflict between legal expertise and the political competence of the newStorting (National dag m i chal s e n 183 Hugo, Lehrbuch der Geschichte des römischen Rechts (11.Aufl. 1832) pp. 429-430, and, not surprisingly, it was criticized by political liberals, see e.g. R. von Mohl, Staatsrecht, Völkerrecht und PolitikVol. 2 (1862) p. 377. 11 Savigny, Vom Beruf Ch 2. 12 Savigny, SystemI § 31 pp. 204-205 (without any references to Schrader, as far as I can see).
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