Socialist Legal Experts: A New Profession?

Abstract

The German state has played a much stronger and more central role in the training, recruitment, and control of its lawyers than the British or American state. In contrast to their Anglo-American colleagues, German lawyers have had the privilege and the burden of the so-called Juristenmonopol since the 19th century, inherited from the age in which most lawyers were employed by the state as civil servants. This means that they need a final university examination and a second examination after two years of articling. Even though since the late 19th century most of the trained lawyers have not been able to find a position in the civil service for a variety of reasons and have had to establish themselves as free solicitors or in similar professions, the Juristenmonopol has not been revoked. For this reason, Rottleuthner calls the German lawyers a “spurious profession,” and Jarausch talks about “unfree professions” (Jarausch, 1990; Rottleuthner, 1988). The professionalization of lawyers as well as their place in the elites of administration and government have been a continuing research topic in the social sciences. Starting in the 19th century, the history of this successful professionalization involved the so-called Juristenmonopol, that is, lawyers’ privileged access to positions in civil service, the self-recruiting mechanisms of the profession, as well as a commitment to delineate oneself from other professional groups. Often, studies focus on the two dictatorships, National Socialism and the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Whereas research on National Socialism in the late 1960s was dominated by the idea that politically conformist elites were ousting the previous legal elite, more recent research has shown the decisive role, function, and continuity of German lawyers in justice and administration. Nonetheless, state policy was directed at de-professionalizing this group, questioning its self-image, knowledge, and ethics (Dahrendorf, 1965; Ruck, 1996; Siegrist, 1996). Research on the second German dictatorship in this century is still in its infancy. At the moment most inquiries emphasize, above all, the process of politi-