Law and Knowledge - remarks on a debate in German legal science

Abstract

The relationship between law and knowledge is a new topic in the field of legal science, and it is dealt with in particular in public law as sub-discipline of law. The topic is definitely not new with regard to other scientific domains. Thus law might be seen as a late comer. This article intends to outline some aspects of the current discussion to provide the essential groundwork on the topic, initially by explaining why the interrelation between law and knowledge might be important. This article does not cover aspects of knowledge as an object of law, which is often discussed under this headline but focusses on more basic aspects of the relationship between knowledge and law that may summarized in the hypothesis that law shapes knowledge but also that knowledge shapes the law. Following an introduction on how ‘knowledge’ is to be defined as a term, the discourse moves on to examine law as a practice through which knowledge is constantly generated in multiple manners, while, immediately afterwards the different typologies of knowledge, from the most tangible (through experience and conventions) to the most articulate ones (through European administrative networks) are presented. It reveals an important requirement of creating a European Administrative space, which is a shared knowledge base where administrative actions are embedded in. Even if it may come as a surprise to some, ignorance, as the opposite of knowledge, can also be a process or element that plays a role in law generation, as the article further argues. Last but not least, an analysis of the preconditions necessary for observing the law and knowledge conundrum either under conditions of awareness or of ignorance is provided.