‘Would any of them have suffered from a guilty conscience if they had won?’: Rudolf Wiethölter and post-Second World War German law1

Abstract

This article reads the theory of law of the Frankfurter jurist Rudolf Wiethölter as an ambitious attempt to realize through law the indispensable radical democratization of post-Second World War German society. The occasion was provided by the resurgence of critical theory and the subsequent and related emergence and affirmation of the student protest movement of 1968 at the Goethe University Frankfurt. Following the thread of the conflict/dialogue at the university with fellow philosopher Jürgen Habermas, the article brings into focus some stages in the evolution of Wiethölter's critical theory of law and of ‘true jurists’.