Karl Eduard Julius Theodor Rudolf Stammler was an influential German philosopher of law.
19 Facts About Rudolf Stammler
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Rudolf Stammler distinguished a purely formal concept of law from the ideal, the realization of justice.
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Rudolf Stammler thought that, rather than reacting and adjusting the law to economic pressures, the law should be deliberately steered towards the current ideal.
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Karl Eduard Julius Theodor Rudolf Stammler was born in Alsfeld, Hesse on 19 February 1856.
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Rudolf Stammler gained practical experience in various courts in the Land of Hesse, the last being that of Leipzig in 1880.
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In 1888 Rudolf Stammler gave his support to the draft code, rejecting the fatalist views of nationalists such as Otto von Gierke who thought a people's law must unfold naturally.
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Rudolf Stammler opposed the view of Ferdinand Lassalle and the socialists that economic forces determine the law.
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Rudolf Stammler became a leading thinker in European jurisprudence, along with Gustav Radbruch and Hans Kelsen, all of whom were greatly influenced by neo-Kantian philosophy.
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Rudolf Stammler claimed that law plays a central role in shaping the economy, in contrast with the Marxist view that the laws evolve naturally to support a given economic system.
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Rudolf Stammler died on 25 April 1938 at Wernigerode, Saxony-Anhalt, aged 82.
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Rudolf Stammler borrowed from Kant's metaphysical individualism to develop his theory of metaphysical-collectivism, or social idealism.
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Rudolf Stammler worked towards finding a critical method, modeled on Kant's philosophical approach, for determining what constituted justice.
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Rudolf Stammler tried to address the question of how judges should decide cases if their decisions are to be objectively just, as opposed to formally correct.
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Rudolf Stammler argued that a law could be considered objectively valid to the extent that it enabled the objectively harmonious purposes of freedom, unity and order.
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Rudolf Stammler questioned the Marxist ideal of a society with collective ownership of the means of production that ignored the critical role of law in ensuring social justice.
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Rudolf Stammler granted that economic forces were powerful, but asserted that the question of justice was independent.
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Rudolf Stammler thought it was unrealistic to wait for law to eventually adjust itself to changes in the structure of the economy, as the Marxists would assert.
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Rudolf Stammler felt that the objective must be to achieve just results, defined as a social ideal.
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Rudolf Stammler thought that this ideal depended on the level of social harmony in any place, which would change over time.