To reach one’s Zweckin law, one must be prepared to start one’s Kampf ums Recht, one’s struggle to attain one’s ends, as Von Ihering explains in his book on the subject.Der Kampf ums Rechtis Von Ihering’s elaboration of a speech de-livered before a Vienna audience of jurists-practitioners. Such was its success that within two months after its publication in 1872 a second edition was neces-sary, a year later a third and 1874 did not only see the fourth edition but also translations in Hungarian, Russian and Dutch. The fifth edition of 1877 was
the expression of theVolksgeist, a view Holmes attacked inThe Common Law, but that it is un-certain whether Holmes had read Von Savigny when he started developingThe Common Law.
Rudolf von Ihering,In the heaven for legal concepts: a fantasy[1884], tr. Charlotte L. Levy, foreword by John M. Lindsey,Temple Law Quarterly58 (1985): 799–842, 804. I also used Rudolf von Ihering,Scherz und Ernst in der Jurisprudenz (Darmstad: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesell-schaft, 1992).
Von Ihering,Heaven, 820.
Riebschlager,Freirechtsbewegung, 17 and 48.
translated into English. For this outstanding contribution to legal theory Ihering was also given a decoration, the Cross of the St. Annen Order, by the Russian emperor.²³
As Von Ihering explains, his aim was not to further the scientific study of law but“the cultivation of the state of mind from which the law must ultimately de-rive its strength, viz.: the courageous and constant exercise of the feeling of right,” an unfortunate translation of the original German term“Rechtsgefühl”
which refers to the idea of law and justice rather than to an individual, subjective right.²⁴This can be inferred from Von Ihering’s definition of the struggle for law as “Der Kampf ums Recht ist eine Pflicht des Berechtigten gegen sich selbst”
which is rather roughly translated as“The struggle for his right is a duty of the person whose rights have been violated, to himself,”²⁵because what Von Ihering means to emphasize, next to any practical result in law because law and rights can only be said to exist when they are“realized”in the world,²⁶is the ethical thrust: it is our existential duty to seek law and justice.²⁷The English translation is therefore a bit ambiguous, no doubt given the civil-law setting of the production of Von Iher-ing’s text as compared to the American translator’s common-law setting.²⁸
For purposes of citation I use the 4thedition in German and the 5thedition in English: Rudolf von Ihering,Der Kampf ums Recht,4thedition, inRudolf von Jhering Ausgewählte Schriften, ed.
Christian Rusche (Nürnberg: Glock und Lutz Verlag, 1965); Rudolph von Ihering,The Struggle for Law, trans. from the 5thedition in German by John J. Lalor (Chicago: Callaghan and Co., 1879); for materials with respect to the speech version, I also consulted Rudolf von Ihering,Der Kampf um’s Recht, 18th edition 1913, ed. Felix Ermacora (Berlin: Propyläen Verlag, 1992). The work is also translated asThe Battle for Right, trans. Philip Arthur Ashworth (London: Stevens and Son, 1883). Cf.Kampf um’s Recht, the introduction by Ermacora at 27–28, for the reference to the decoration.
Von Ihering,Struggle for Law, vii,Kampf ums Recht, 195“weniger darauf gericht, die wissen-schaftliche Erkenntnis des Rechts […] zu fördern […] [als] diejenige Gesinnung[…]: die der mu-tigen und standhaften Behauptung des Rechtsgefühls.”
Von Ihering,Kampf ums Recht, 213, Von Ihering,Struggle for Law, 29.
Von Ihering,Struggle for Law, 12,Kampf ums Recht, 204,“The idea of law is an eternal Be-coming”; cf. Benjamin Cardozo’s“Law never is, but is always about to be”(The Nature of the Judicial Process, New Haven: Yale university Press, 1921), 126.
Von Ihering,Struggle for Law, 129–130,“It is […] ethics which has to tell us what is in har-mony with, and what contradicts, the idea of law.”Kampf ums Recht, 272,“Die Ethik hat uns Aufschluss darüber zu geben, was dem Wesen des Rechts entspricht oder widerspricht.”
Cf.Kampf um’s Recht, the introduction by Ermacora, 46, which references the original speech that contains the wonderfully succinct remark on the duty not to be a coward when it comes to struggling for one’s right:“Das Preisgeben eines verletzten Rechtes ist in meinen Augen ein Act der Feigheit, der, wenn er nicht durch die Einrichtungen des Staates zur Nothwendigkeit ge-macht wird, der Person zur Unehre und dem Gemeinwesen zum höchsten Schaden gereicht.
Der Kampf für das Recht ist ein Act der ethischen Selbsterhaltung, ist eine Pflicht gegen sich
So what matters, also in Shylock’s case, is that one therefore always has to start thelegis actioas it is called in Roman law, in order to invoke the law,“das Gesetz anrufen,”for“The law itself is called in question; it is the law itself which is under discussion in a particular case […] There is question not alone of a per-sonal interest […] but there is a question of the law itself which has been de-spised, trampled under foot, and which must be defended, if the law itself is not to become a mockery and a word without meaning. When the legal right of the individual is sacrificed, the law is sacrificed likewise.”²⁹ This can also be seen in Shylock’s remark “I stand for judgment” (IV.1.103),³⁰ immediately after he has said“The pound of flesh which I demand of him Is dearly bought.
‘Tis mine, and I will have it. If you deny me, fie upon your law: there is no force in the decrees of Venice (IV.1.98–101).”It is this passage from the play that Von Ihering first cites, without clear references, however, so that we cannot be abso-lutely sure whether after this he refers to the“I stand for judgment”or to“I stand here for law”(IV.1.141) or the line“I crave the law”(IV.1.201) that follows Portia’s
“quality of mercy”speech, which is what the English translator chooses.
Not that it matters much since all citations qualify when it comes to the use Von Ihering makes of Shylock’s standpoint, namely that
It is hatred and revenge that take Shylock before the court to cut his pound of flesh out of Antonio’s body; but the words which the poet puts into his mouth are as true in it as in any other. It is the language which the wounded feeling of legal right will speak, at all times and in all places; the power, the firmness of the conviction, that law must remain law, the lofty feeling and pathos of a man who is conscious that, in what he claims, there is question not only of his person but of the law. […]‘I crave the law’. In these four words, the poet has described the relation of law in the subjective to law in the objective sense of the term and the meaning of the struggle for law, in a manner better than any philoso-pher of the law could have done it. These four words change Shylock’s claim into a question
und gegen die Gemeinschaft,”my translation“To relinquish a violated right is in my opinion an act of cowardice, that when not made necessary by the organizations of the state, brings dis-grace to the individual and harm to the community.”In the book versions, see the comparable but rhetorically weaker passages Von Ihering,Struggle for Law, 127,Kampf ums Recht, 217–271.
Von Ihering,Struggle for Law, 78–79;Kampf ums Recht, 242“das Gesetz anzurufen […] Das Gesetz selber ist in Frage gestellt, es is ein Streit ums Gesetz, der in dem einzelnen Fall entscheiden werden muss […] es handelt sich bei dem Streit nicht bloss um das Interesse des Subjekts […] son-dern das Gesetz selber is missachtet, mit Füssen getreten; das Gesetz, wenn es nicht eitel Spiel und Phrase sein soll, muss sich behaupten–dem Recht des Verletzten, stürtzt das Gesetz selbst zusam-men.”
References are to William Shakespeare,The Merchant of Venice, inThe Norton Shakespeare, eds. Stephen Greenblatt et al. (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997).
of the law of Venice […] it is the law of Venice itself knocking at the door of Justice; for his rights and the law of Venice are one and the same; they both stand or fall together.³¹
As a result of Portia’s interpretive strategy, not only Shylock but the law itself is broken. So when Shylock“finally succumbs under the weight of the judge’s de-cision, who wipes out his right by a shocking piece of pleasantry,”³² […]“who can help feeling that in him the law of Venice is humbled; that it is not the Jew, Shylock, who moves painfully away, but the typical figure of the Jew in the middle ages, that pariah of society who cried in vain for justice?”³³ The trag-edy, then, to Von Ihering, is not that Shylock’s rights are denied in“the patho-logical moment” in which he seeks them,³⁴ but that his faith in the law as a firm rock is shaken by the judge who dispels the illusion that he has a right and teaches him that he is only “the despised medieval Jew to whom justice is done by defrauding him.”³⁵ Onward now to the famous footnote attached to the passage“a shocking piece of pleasantry”which is a rather weak translation, I suggest, of Von Ihering’s“schnöden Witz,” “schnöde”being a far more nega-tive connotation of disgraceful behaviour with the intent to cause harm. It
re- Von Ihering,Struggle for Law, 80–81. It should be noted that language is one of Von Iher-ing’s metaphors for law, undoubtedly an influence of the Historical School. Cf. Kampf um’s Recht, the introduction by Ermacora, 18, referencing the speaker who thanked Von Ihering after his speech, and specifically noted the Herderian idea that law, like the language of a people develops organically throughout the ages,“wie die Sprache eines Volkes, ein auch sich organisch werdendes, ein organisch gewordenes Product der Geschichte sei,”my translation“like the lan-guage of a people, an organically developing, and organically created product of history.”Cf.
Kampf ums Recht, 243, for the same passage in German.
Von Ihering,Struggle for Law, 81;Kampf ums Recht, 243,“Und wenn er selber dann zusam-menbricht unter der Wucht des Richterspruches, der durch schnöden Witz sein Recht vereitelt.”
Von Ihering,Struggle for Law, 82.
Cf.Kampf um’s Recht, the speech version in the introduction by Ermacora, 41, “pathologi-schen Momentes.”
Von Ihering,Struggle for Law, 82–83,“His fate is eminently tragic, not because his rights are denied him, but because he, a Jew of the middle ages, has faith in the law–we might say as if he were a Christian–a faith in the law firm as a rock which nothing can shake, and which the judge himself feeds until the catastrophe breaks upon him like a thunder clap, dispels the illu-sion and teaches him that he is only the despised medieval Jew to whom justice is done by de-frauding him”;Kampf ums Recht, 244,“Die gewaltige Tragik seines Schicksals beruht nicht darauf, dass ihm das Recht versagt wird, sondern darauf, dass er, ein Jude des Mittelalters, den Glauben an das Recht hat–man möchte sagen, gleich als wäre er ein Christ -, einen felsenfesten Glauben an das Recht, den nichts beirren kann und den der Richter selber nährt; bis dann wie ein Don-nerschlag die Katastrophe über ihn hereinbricht, die ihn aus seinem Wahn reisst und ihn belehrt, dass er nichts ist als der geächtete Jude des Mittelalters, dem man sein Recht gibt, indem man ihn darum betrügt.”
turns as“ein elender Winkelzug, ein kläglicher Rabulistenkniff,”rabula being the Latin for“wrangling advocate, pettifogger,”³⁶
The eminently tragic interest which we feel in Shylock, I find to have its basis precisely in the fact that justice is not done to him; for this is the conclusion to which the lawyer must come. The poet is, of course, free to build up his own system of jurisprudence, and we have no reason to regret that Shakespeare has done so here; or rather that he has changed the old fable in nothing. But when the jurist submits the question to a critical examination, he can only say that the bond was in itself null and void because its provisions were contrary to good morals. The judge should, therefore, have refused to enforce its terms on this ground from the first. But as he did not do so, as the“wise Daniel”admitted its validity, it was a wretched subterfuge, a miserable piece of pettifoggery, to deny the man whose right he had already admitted, to cut a pound of flesh from the living body, the right to the shedding of blood which necessarily accompanied it. Just as well might the judge deny to the person whose right to an easement he acknowledged, the right to leave foot-marks on the land, because this was not expressly stipulated in the grant. One might al-most believe that the tragedy of Shylock was enacted in the earliest days of Rome; for the author of the Twelve Tables held it necessary to remark expressly in relation to the lac-eration of the debtor (in partes secare) by the creditor, that the size of the piece should be left to his free choice. (Si plus minusve secuerint, sine fraude esto!).³⁷
Von Ihering compares Shylock’s broken resistance after Portia’s decision to the figure of Michael Kohlhaas in Heinrich von Kleist’s eponymous novel. Kohlhaas is given a comparable treatment but he stays firm in his insistence on, and de-votion to the law. In the end he accepts the consequence of his position with dig-nity: after his rights are honored he accepts the death penalty for his own violent acts. What matters to me here is that Von Ihering qualifies this decision as “Ju-dicial murder is the deadly sin of the law”³⁸and this is, I suggest, also Von Iher-ing’s verdict of Portia’s act.
How, then, did it come about that Von Ihering was so severely criticized for his footnote?³⁹From a point of law it is well-balanced, both as far as the outcome of the case as authored by Shakespeare is concerned, for Von Ihering respects Shakespeare’s authorial liberty and from his approving remark that “we have no reason to regret that Shakespeare has done so here,”⁴⁰i.e. that the outcome in the sense of the denial of the validity of the bond is as such correct, and from
Von Ihering,Kampf ums Recht, 244. Cf. Julius Hirschfeld,“Portia’s Judgment,”167 n.1.
Von Ihering,Struggle for Law, 81 note 1;Kampf ums Recht, 244 note.*
Von Ihering,Struggle for Law, 86,Kampf ums Recht, 247,“Justizmord ist die wahre Todsünde des Rechts.”
Already afterKampf ums Rechtwas published in the speech version, Von Ihering was criti-cized, see Cf.Kampf um’s Recht, the introduction by Ermacora, 28.
Von Ihering,Struggle for Law, 81 note 1.
a point of view of interpretation, i.e. his remark that if one pays careful attention to the legal aspects, the verdict would have been that the bond was void, is in no way out of the order with his legal theory. Von Ihering’s view that the bond was null and void to start with fits with his jurisprudence of interests that takes into consideration principles of law when ascertaining what the lawgiver intended with a specific piece of legislation as noted above in paragraph 2. That would include, I suggest, equity in its original Aristotelian meaning of equitable justice as found in theNicomachean Ethics, not least because in Das Zweck im Recht Von Ihering thinks in terms of mercy as justice in the individual case.⁴¹
In other words, this resembles the Aristotelian argument that“all law is uni-versal but about some things it is not possible to make a uniuni-versal statement which shall be correct.”Thus, the error that arises from the universality of the law, is an omission to be corrected by saying, “what the legislator himself would have said had he been present, and would have put into his law if he had known,”hence Aristotle’s conclusion that,“this is the nature of the equi-table, a correction of law where it is defective owing to its universality.”⁴² The equitable is therefore just not because it is legally correct; it is just because it is a correction of the justice provided by the system of law itself. It is here that Portia fails as the judge who interprets the lawgiver’s texts: she has the tech-nical acuity to understand that according to Venetian law the bond must be hon-ored if she sticks to the letter of the law, but her solution to save Antonio’s life is lacking in the practical wisdom necessary to apply the equitable correction of the law that the bond’s content is contrary to the principle of good morals
under- See also the twentieth-century editor of Von Ihering’s Der Zweck im Recht, Arthur Kauf-mann’s view that to Von Ihering mercy was the“Selbstkorrektur der Gerechtigkeit”(as noted inDer Zweck im Recht, vol.1, 6th and 8th German edition, 1923, 331) in“Recht und Gnade in der Literatur,”in Arthur Kaufmann,Beiträge zur Juristischen Hermeneutik(Köln: Carl Heymanns Verlag, 1984), 227–245, 228. But see the different view of Gustav Radbruch,Rechtsphilosophie [1950] eds Erik Wolf and Hans-Peter Schneider (Stuttgart: K.F. Köhler Verlag, 1973), Besonderer Teil, par. 24“Die Gnade,”275, i.e.“Mercy,” “Die Gnade erschöpft sich also nicht darin, nach Iher-ings Wort“Sicherheitsventil des Rechtes”zu sein. Sie ist ein Symbol, dass es in der Welt Werte gibt, die aus tieferen Quellen gespeist werden und zu höheren Höhen aufgipfeln, als das Recht.”To Rad-bruch, mercy is not the safety valve but a symbol of a universal value that is superior to positive law. From a point of view of legal theory, however, Von Ihering’s view and Radbruch’s are not es-sentially different; they differ in degree rather than kind since both agree on the function of mercy to bring about justice, and both agree that mercy is part and parcel of law as an ordering system, since as“Selbstkorrektur,”it is self-correction of law. Cf. Gustav Radbruch,Kleines Rechts-Brevier [1941] (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1954), nr. 59, referencing the“quality of mercy”-speech.
Aristotle,The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. and introduction by David Ross, revised by J.L. Ac-krill and J.O. Urmson (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 132–133, V.10.
lying all law, that it is unconscionable. I find support for this view also in Von Ihering’s remarks in the Preface to the 5th edition where he says that those who disagree with him have to answer the question, “What should a man do when his rights are trampled under foot?”and continues by saying that“The per-son who can give a tenable answer to the question, that is an answer compatible with the existence of law and order and with the dignity of personality has refuted me,”⁴³ the inclusion of the principle of human dignity and legal personhood being indicative of the inclusion of principles in thequidditas or“whatness”of law.⁴⁴
lying all law, that it is unconscionable. I find support for this view also in Von Ihering’s remarks in the Preface to the 5th edition where he says that those who disagree with him have to answer the question, “What should a man do when his rights are trampled under foot?”and continues by saying that“The per-son who can give a tenable answer to the question, that is an answer compatible with the existence of law and order and with the dignity of personality has refuted me,”⁴³ the inclusion of the principle of human dignity and legal personhood being indicative of the inclusion of principles in thequidditas or“whatness”of law.⁴⁴