Specifics of legal thinking in Germany (1930–1940s): Carl Schmitt’s and Carl Larenz’s reflections on values

Under the influence of historical changes that took place in Germany during the period of national socialism and after the WW2, German legal scholars C. Schmitt and C. Larenz repeatedly returned to the topic of legal thinking: Schmitt – in such works on the theory of law and political theory as “Dictatorship†(1921), “Political Theology†(1922), “On Three Types of Legal Thinking†(1934), “Nomos of the Earth†(1950) and “Tyranny of Values†(1960). Larenz did his research on legal thinking in “Legal Entity and Subjective Law as a Turn to Basic Legal Concepts†(1935), “On the Logic of a Concrete Concept†(1940) and “Methodology of Jurisprudence†(1960), all of them being of narrower than Schmitt’s focus. In order to identify the method and type of legal thinking, Schmitt developed a doctrine of thinking in categories of a concrete order, Larenz – a study of concrete-universal concepts. Both intellectual constructs are characterized by a high degree of their adaptability to legal values, the idea of which was revealed by Schmitt and Larenz in the process of constitutionalization of the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany when constitutional rights were granted a value status.The paper deals with the conceptual analysis of legal thinking in Germany of the 30–40s of the 20th century from the position of Carl Schmitt and Carl Larenz and the comparison of their ideas about legal values enshrined in the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany. The relevance of such an analysis is explained by (a) the lack of Russian research devoted to a comparative analysis of views shared by Schmitt and his contemporaries and (b) the lack of Larenz’s books translated into Russian. As for the works of foreign legal theorists on the stated theme, the most detailed comparative analysis undertaken by Schmitt and Larenz was carried out by Bernd Rüthers (1930–2023), a German legal scholar, whose works the author of the paper will repeatedly refer to.