For a long time, German legal history had the reputation of being technical and sterile. While this assessment was not completely unwarranted, things would be much worse today had there not been an almost constant stream of anglophone literature, which infused the field with fresh and thought-provoking impulses. The new book by Hugh Ridley stands in the tradition of popular yet theoretically informed twentieth-century German legal historiography. Based on the author's profound knowledge of sociopolitical, cultural, and intellectual strands of modern German history and a distinct interest in theories of penal law, criminology, and legal sociology, the book uses the lens of criminal, constitutional, and civil court cases to investigate the Federal Republic's transformation into a stable democracy. While Jürgen Habermas dubbed this a process of “fundamental liberalization,” Ridley's selection of both prominent and little-known court proceedings from the late 1940s to the 2000s demonstrates that a fortunate outcome was far from predetermined. In stark contrast to the familiar “risen from the ashes” narrative, as told in numerous comprehensive accounts of the Bonn Republic, Ridley focuses on long-term liabilities that severely hampered a deeper democratization of the West German judiciary and the emergence of a liberal-minded, truly democratic legal culture.

Departing from the old truism that matters of law and jurisprudence reflect important, though often hidden aspects of a country's political and social fabric, the author does not see himself as a detached observer and cool analyst. Rather, he takes the position of an engaged observer and historian who has “more or less grown up with the Federal Republic” (2). This perspective of self-reflexive subjectivity guides the book's source selection, its focus, and interpretations. Moreover, it makes reading it a particular pleasure, despite the heavy content. In a nutshell, Ridley's overall theme is “the role of the law in a new democracy” (4). Written in a lucid, accessible, and elegant language, with some acerbic overtones, the book tackles head-on some fundamental, still widely under-researched problems of the West German Rechtsstaat: What were the long-term consequences of the fact that the Allies not only failed to denazify the law and the judiciary, but were similarly unsuccessful in their efforts to reform the still powerful German civil service (Beamtentum)? How did the first cohorts of judges adapt to the conditions of mass democracy and social change? How did their Nazi careers, inborn conservatism, and anti-pluralist attitudes affect different jurisprudential fields? And, most importantly, what was the role of the new Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) as a designated “guardian of the constitution?”

With the exception of the Flick case (one of the American trials of German industrialists conducted in Nuremberg), all of the examples are proceedings that took place in the Federal Republic. In a chronological order, the book covers many controversial issues like the banning of the Communist Party (KPD), the famous Lüth case, the application of the murder paragraph in early routine cases, the treatment of homosexuality (Paragraph 175) and abortion (Paragraph 218), the Spiegel Affair, the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial, the court's interpretation of the concept of “militant democracy” in the context of the Radikalenerlass and homegrown terrorism by the Red Army Faction, the judicial implications of environmental activism, and the legal proceedings concerning right-wing terrorism after the fall of the Wall.

Due to the heterogeneity of the individual cases, only a few of the author's arguments can be mentioned here. According to Ridley, the Constitutional Court's confirmation of the KPD ban, certainly the most important decision in the early phase of the court's existence, reflected a high degree of “insecurity” and the determination to “remain close to political power,” made manifest in the court's compliance with the government's campaign to suppress communism (65). In his discussion of the scandalous rulings against homosexuals and in abortion cases, Ridley draws on the important research by Dagmar Herzog and Sybille Steinbacher. While scholars often describe the attitudes of West German courts toward issues of sexuality and family planning as part of a general re-Catholicization of West German society, the author names a couple of facts which speak in favor of holdovers of former Nazi legislation. In one of its most controversial decisions, the Constitutional Court acknowledged the repressive use of Paragraph 175 by Nazi authorities while at the same time defending its ongoing validity in the Federal Republic as an instrument of “legal order” (115). Given the fact that references to public morality had been an essential feature of Nazi jurisdiction, prosecutors and judges not only undermined Allied efforts to denazify the German penal code, but simply denied that there had been a change in the moral climate at all.

Ridley's book is an important contribution to a current historiographical debate that seeks to reassess how the failed denazification and the seamless reintegration of civil servants on federal, state, and local levels influenced democratic institutions. While one can certainly agree with the more general argument that many aspects of the Nazi Weltanschauung remained alive and even acceptable within the West German judiciary, it is another matter to distinguish features of Nazi ideology in judicial reasoning. The tautological statement that “the judges were perfectly happy to stay with the morality of the Nazis because they still agreed with it” (123) sheds light on a methodical shortcoming of this study, which comes to far-reaching conclusions about alleged identification with Nazi ideas on a limited evidentiary base (mostly published court decisions). Confronted with recent nativist backlashes in the judicial systems of European countries, one feels compelled to ask whether the author's focus on the remnants of Nazi legislation might be too narrow, given the fact that the judiciary traditionally had been a powerful stronghold of anti-modern attitudes and sexual conservatism. Moreover, an argument could be made that the selection of court cases predetermines a certain interpretation (that of continuity), whereas a different sample would have led to different conclusions. But this critique does not diminish the importance of this valuable book, which is an excellent entry to a difficult topic for scholars and students alike.