Graduate School Law as Science

The graduate school "Law as Science" realizes a new concept of doctoral supervision in the field of legal history. The starting point is a sobering observation. In law in particular, there are far too many status doctorates. Many doctoral students have little interest in science, are poorly supervised and do not even want to change that. It is simply a matter of acquiring a formal additional qualification for later practical work. The result is an uncritical and dependently written down reconstruction of jurisprudence and literature. In contrast to this, doctorates in the basic legal subjects are designed from the outset for in-depth academic discussion. The updating of authoritative, such as judicial texts is ruled out in these subjects. Doctoral degrees in basic subjects require the development of a precise and feasible question in the current state of research, a well-founded reflection of one's own methodological position, an interdisciplinary discussion and careful and critical source work. Working with ancient texts makes legal history, in particular, a historical-hermeneutic science that works closely with the scientific requirements in the humanities. The question of the scientific nature of jurisprudence can therefore be answered in the affirmative without any problems for the fundamentals and in particular for legal history. These subjects therefore have a special responsibility for an autonomous, scientifically oriented law. This was particularly emphasized in the opinion of the Science Council on the state of law. These special conditions for doctoral students in comparison to other law sub-subjects result in special requirements for supervision. The Graduate School “Law as Science” has been starting here for several years.

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