| Document Type
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BL
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| Record Number
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950765
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| Doc. No
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b705135
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| Main Entry
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Ledford, Kenneth F., (Kenneth Floyd),1953-
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| Title & Author
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From general estate to special interest : : German lawyers, 1878-1933 /\ Kenneth F. Ledford.
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| Publication Statement
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Cambridge ;New York :: Cambridge University Press,, 1996.
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| Page. NO
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1 online resource (xxxv, 351 pages) :: illustrations
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| ISBN
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0511528884
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: 9780511528880
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052103020X
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0521560314
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9780521030205
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9780521560313
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| Bibliographies/Indexes
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Includes bibliographical references and index.
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| Contents
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Hierarchy of Courts -- Glossary of Legal and Other Terms -- 1. The Archimedean Point: Lawyers, Liberalism, and the Middle-Class Project -- 2. Freie Advokatur: The Blending of the Middle-Class and Professional Projects -- 3. Foundation of the Modern Profession: The Private Bar under the Lawyers' Statute -- 4. Institutional Framework: Lawyers and Honoratiorenpolitik -- 5. Growth and Diversification: Lawyers in the Province of Hannover, 1878-1933 -- 6. Elites and Professional Ideology: Self-Discipline and Self-Administration by the Anwaltskammer Celle -- 7. Simultaneous Admission: The Limits of Honoratiorenpolitik -- 8. The Limits of Economic Liberalism: Freie Advokatur or Numerus Clausus? -- 9. The Limits of Political Liberalism: Lawyers and the Weimar State -- 10. Conclusion: Lawyers and the Limits of Liberalism.
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| Abstract
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The easy success of National Social "coordination" of German lawyers in private practice in 1933 has puzzled historians. Within five months, a profession that had been considered a bulwark of civil society bowed to the demands of a party whose leader viewed lawyers with contempt and valued race over right.
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But developments between 1878 and 1933 did not turn out as expected. Lawyers brought with them inherent limitations of conceptual vision, professional structure, and social flexibility. Their training installed in them a belief in the primacy of procedure that linked them with liberalism but constrained their imagination as they faced the massive changes of the era. They built elite professional institutions that became the terrain of intraprofessional power struggles. Reform attracted new social groups to the bar, creating tensions that rendered it unable to represent professional interest or even to maintain the claim that a unitary professional interest existed. By the 1920s, lawyers' claim to be the general estate was no longer tenable, instead they were merely one of many special interests in a society and state that to increasing numbers of Germans appeared dangerously fragmented.
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This trajectory, from general estate to special interest, explains their paralysis and inaction in 1933 more than any putative betrayal of liberalism or of professional ideals.
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Through a detailed empirical study of the practicing bar in Germany, Ledford traces the history of German lawyers from the heady days of reform to 1878 to their abject defeat in 1933. In the 1870s, lawyers basked in the widespread assessment of their profession as a sort of Hegelian "general estate," representing the general interest and entitled to respect, deference, and leadership. Many believed that reform of the legal profession was the key to success in the project of the liberal Burgertum. Liberal reformers and lawyers achieved almost all of their aims in the great legislative reform of 1878, carving out space for the bar to create its own institutions, to govern its internal affairs, and to assume the public role that theory ascribed to it.
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| Subject
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Lawyers-- Germany-- History.
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Practice of law-- Political aspects-- Germany-- History.
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Practice of law-- Social aspects-- Germany-- History.
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Practice of law-- Germany-- History.
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Lawyers.
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Practice of law-- Political aspects.
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Practice of law-- Social aspects.
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| Subject
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Practice of law.
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| Subject
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Germany.
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| Dewey Classification
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340/.115/0943
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| LC Classification
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KK3769.A65L43 1996eb
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