German jurisprudence invokes continuity, stability, and legal certainty as some of its defining principles. Yet a historical and philosophical perspective suggests that legal truths themselves do not stand outside their time. Rather, they are continuously redefined within the tensions of social transformation.
“It is not difficult to see that ours is a time of birth and transition to a new period. Spirit has broken with the world of its previous existence and conception, and is in the process of consigning it to the past and engaging in the labour of its own transformation. Indeed, it is never at rest, but always engaged in an ever-progressive movement.” (Hegel, 1807)
Upon closer examination, law appears less as a static body of norms than as a historically embedded process, constituted through reciprocal relations between subject and object, society and institution. This essay therefore advances the proposition that legal truths—assuming such truths can be said to exist at all—are themselves subject to the dialectical transformations of historical epochs described by Hegel.
Although law presents itself as a realm of continuity, a socio-historical perspective reveals jurisprudence as a dynamic process of becoming, in which collective self-understandings, normative aporias, and institutional claims to interpretation continuously shape and reshape one another.
The Unity of Opposites: Hegel’s Dialectic and the Relationship Between Society and Jurisprudence
In the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel’s concept of Geist is commonly interpreted as referring to a form of World Spirit, which realises itself throughout history as objective spirit and thereby encompasses the totality of historical development (Hegel 1982: 5).
Yet any particular historical epoch reveals only a fragment of this larger process—what Hegel describes as a self-completing scepticism. What exists in the present, particularly in the realm of knowledge, can therefore only be understood as the result of a dialectical movement.
What is recognised as truth emerges as a synthesis between an underlying thesis and its opposing antithesis. The synthesis constitutes the dialectical sublation (Aufhebung) of the tensions from which it arises.
What came before remains the necessary condition of possibility for what is presently regarded as true knowledge and thus as binding understanding.
Hegel’s dialectic therefore appears as a doctrine of the unity of opposites. Truth is not a static entity but a historically unfolding structure. One may already hear an echo here of Heraclitus’ famous dictum panta rhei—everything flows—which points to the perpetual movement of being itself.
Against this background, it seems plausible that the evolution of German jurisprudence is likewise characterised by a reciprocal relationship between society and what that society recognises as law.
Law as an Expression of Social Reality
Just as law prescribes, interprets, and sanctions socially accepted forms of conduct, it is society itself that constitutes the source of those normatively binding rules.
Law thus appears not merely as an instrument of social order but simultaneously as an expression of the social reality from which it emerges and upon which it subsequently acts.
The development of jurisprudence is therefore subject to continuous transformation. It reveals itself as a unity of opposites in which normative stability and social change remain inseparably intertwined. Out of legal aporias arise new normative assumptions—occasionally even norms attaining the status of ius cogens—which then come to govern future cases.
The evolution of law is therefore better understood not as a radical rupture between old and new jurisprudence, but as a dialectical transformation in which the old becomes the necessary condition of the new. Law continuously adapts itself to changing social realities, emerging phenomena, and political disagreements.
The proposition that legal truths are subject to the dialectical transformations of historical epochs therefore appears highly plausible. Law preserves its fundamental structures precisely by continuously redefining them in light of new social realities.
The emerging synthesis represents the dialectical overcoming of the contradictions from which it arises. What has become legally “untrue” may appear obsolete, yet it remains the indispensable condition of possibility for what is now recognised as legal truth and authoritative knowledge.
Between Continuity and Change
Even 126 years after the entry into force of the German Civil Code (Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch) in 1900—the first unified codification of German private law—it has not become a relic of a bygone era. Rather, it continues to provide guidance through contemporary legal disputes.
It is precisely here that the true strength of law becomes visible: it preserves continuity not despite change, but through change.
German jurisprudence therefore does not exist between continuity and change. It exists through their unity.
The synthesis that emerges from this process constitutes the dialectical overcoming of the contradictions upon which it rests. What has become legally obsolete nevertheless remains the necessary condition of possibility for what is presently accepted as legal truth.
Hegel’s dialectic thus remains a valuable heuristic instrument for overcoming both historical and epistemic forms of incommensurability.
The question posed at the outset—whether legal truths exist timelessly or are themselves subject to historical transformation—cannot ultimately be answered in favour of a static conception of law.
Legal truth appears less as immutable certainty than as historically constituted knowledge: always provisional, always embedded within its time, yet nevertheless oriented towards permanence.
Perhaps therein lies the true strength of law—not in resisting history, but in its capacity to evolve alongside it.