between the problematic border between that of creating and applying law. Among the many possible examples in German methodological literature, I would draw attention to Oscar Bülow (1837-1907) and Ernst Zitelmann (1852-1923) who brought the figure of Praetor into the debate about the balance between courts and legislators.17 In his famous Gesetz und Richteramt from1885 Bülow’s aim was to underline the actual legislative responsibility of the court, a task that was carried out by means of free decisions.18 The court, he maintained, was the centre of the legal system since formal legislation seldom could be understood as anything else than being a plan of the legislator for the activity of the court, thus defining the decisions of the court “geltendes Recht” whatever the content of the formal legislation. As part of this way of reasoning, Bülow presented an historical reconstruction of the Roman Praetor.19 Not surprisingly Bülow’s version of the Roman Praetor was a court having those qualities which he had subscribed to his contemporary legislating court, accepting its fundamental unconstitutionality.According to Bülow it would be wrong to understand the historical Roman Praetor through the model of the principle of the division of power.20 The merging of the historical Praetor and Bülow’s view of the actual existing courts exercising legislative functions thus created the impression of being the only realistic way of understanding legal production in any society.And this way was in effect a suspension of the classical constitutional division of power. But the Roman Praetor could also be transported to modern society in a more constitutional manner. Four years after Bülow, the theoretically acute Ernst Zitelmann interpreted the function of the Edict of the Praetor in a constitutionally more acceptable way, or rather; he advocated a constitutionalization of the unconstitutional reality of the legislative practice of the court.21 Zitelmann accepted to some extent re cht swi s s e n scha f t al s j ur i st i sch e dok t r i n 186 17 I avoid the German pandect literature which was full of praise about the Roman Praetor as my aim here is to concentrate on contemporary approaches. 18 Bülow, Gesetz und Richteramt (Leipzig 1885) e.g. pp. 6-7 and 42-43. 19 Bülow, Gesetz und Richteramt pp. 18-21. 20 Bülow,Gesetz und Richteramt p19:“eine richterliche Rechtsschöpfung, welcher die moderne dem rechtsschöpferischen Berufe des Richteramts abgewandteTheorie, auch seit sie den Glauben an die Allmacht des Gesetzgebers aufgegeben hat, nicht recht beizukommen weiß, weil die schiefe Schablonen des Gewohnheitsrechts anlegt.“ 21 Zitelmann, Die Rechtsgeschäfte im Entwurf eines Bürgerlichen Gesetzbuches für das Deut-
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