It's a small book. Actually, it is a very small book. Only one hundred and twenty-eight pages, it's a format so thin it could fit into a pocket. As a matter of fact, it is smaller than a copy of the Grundgesetz (German Basic Law) that a German law student would carry along to class. The book's title, however, is considerably more intrepid than the book's small stature. At the same time breathtakingly pithy and slightly immodest, the book is simply called Das Bundesverfassungsgericht (The Federal Constitutional Court). And at the top of the cover, just to make sure, the word “WISSEN” (KNOWLEDGE) appears in big letters. While one wonders how a publication of such limited size could deign to comprehensively present the important “knowledge” of the Federal Constitutional Court, the other words on the cover provide some assurance. Those words are the name of the book's author who obviously could not be more adequate for the task. The author, Jutta Limbach, is the current President of the Federal Constitutional Court presiding in her seventh year.

As the Bundestag (German Parliament) has finally achieved the sought-after Rechtssicherheit (legal certainty) with respect to ending the threat of foreign claims being brought against German corporations, and as the first compensation payments have been made, the alarm over restitution for National Socialist forced labor seems to have quieted itself. At least, public discussion and media coverage has grown silent on the issue. Since The end of Judge Kram's recent “revolt” seems to have signaled the end of the forced labor issue. Well, our attention is limited. Had it not been a long and winding and somewhat tiring road marked by lawyers having it out with other lawyers? And had there not been enough confusing and embarrassing fits and starts, all that turbulence along the way? Now that the first claims are being paid, apparently there is not much to theorize about. While this is likely not true about the legal element of the matter, this article argues that it is also not true for theorizing about the issue. Instead, legal theory could primarily look at forced labor compensation as a highly rewarding piece of scientific research. This concerns not only the compensation process itself, but certain striking aspects of the public perception expressed in the discussion surrounding the compensation-process.

At a stage of life when German law students habitually prepare to finish their studies by intravenously absorbing law at commercial preparation courses, American law student Duncan Kennedy had a somewhat different notion. In a law review article he virtually pulled to pieces what he had experienced as Ivy League education at Yale Law School. In 1983, meanwhile a member of an Ivy League law school faculty, Kennedy resumed his critique in a self-published pamphlet widely known as the Little Red Book. Although being available only at the Harvard bookstore or via mail order from the author, Kennedy's statement has gained quite remarkable fame. It has been reviewed by the most esteemed law reviews, and has been quoted and widely discussed among legal scholars. Now the Little Red Book has even formally arrived in the ivory tower of legal academia: handsomely published, equipped with a fore- and afterword by the author, encompassed by thoughtful essays and, yes, gold letters engraved on the spine. The typescript of the original book however, once consciously produced in a semi-professional manner with a circulation of around 3000 copies, has been preserved. Thus readers do hold the original text in their hands, despite gold gravure.