Phenomenological jurisprudence

a reinterpretation of Adolf Reinach's Jarhrbuch essay

Kimberly Baltzer-Jaray

pp. 117-137

in: Simmons, James E. Hackett (eds), Phenomenology for the twenty-first century, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

Abstract

In The A Priori Foundations of Civil Law, Adolf Reinach brings together realist phenomenological ontology with his prior jurisprudence education in order to provide a damning criticism of the 1900 German civil code as well as to demonstrate the importance of phenomenology to any kind of scientific undertaking. However, Reinach's essay has not been properly understood and discussed. Reinach was arguing for a return to and recognition of an old notion of justice as the insight into a transcendent unity or harmony that subsisted in the world and not something achieved purely through codification. Thus, in this chapter, Baltzer-Jaray suggests that Reinach provides a phenomenology of justice that remains relevant to contemporary debates in the philosophy of law and phenomenology.

Cited authors

Reinach Adolf