Justice in transition

The history of the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe, which was founded in 1950, is still largely unknown despite numerous detailed studies on its personnel and jurisdiction. This two-volume publication now provides the first comprehensive, source-based insight into the structure, functioning and personnel of this highest German court in civil and criminal matters for the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s. The burden of the Nazi past is brought into focus, as is the question of the further development of the court and its judges in the Federal German constitutional state. Volume 2 provides an overview of the court's early jurisprudence up to 1968 and shows, by focussing on specific topics, where the judges of the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) were judging according to traditional patterns of thought and traditional values, but also where they paved the way for innovative jurisprudence on the basis of the Basic Law. The result of several years of interdisciplinary co-operation between contemporary history and legal history provides answers to the question of how and why a gradual change in traditional justice took place despite the many setbacks and political pressures on the judiciary.