No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde: Scholar of Law, Religion, and Democracy - Discussed: Religion, Law, and Democracy: Selected Writings. By Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde. Edited by Mirjam Künkler and Tine Stein. Translated by Thomas Dunlap. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. 480. $65.00 (cloth); Oxford Scholarship Online by subscription (digital). ISBN: 9780198818632. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198818632.001.0001.
Review products
Discussed: Religion, Law, and Democracy: Selected Writings. By Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde. Edited by Mirjam Künkler and Tine Stein. Translated by Thomas Dunlap. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. 480. $65.00 (cloth); Oxford Scholarship Online by subscription (digital). ISBN: 9780198818632. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198818632.001.0001.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2022
Abstract
Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde (1930–2019) was one of Germany’s foremost postwar legal scholars. He coined or popularized key terms and ideas that have left their mark on postwar German political debate to an extent matched by only few, from the chain of legitimation to the concept of the constitution as an ordering frame, the importance of the idea of subsidiarity in the European Union’s political competency, and his insistence that society must continuously work toward agreement on the things that cannot be voted on: the ultimate agreements in society that lie beyond the ballot box. Böckenförde was a lifelong commentator on Catholic affairs in Germany and involved in several important inner-Catholic reform initiatives. At the age of thirty-one, he became known to a wider German public with an article that presented a critical historical appraisal of the role of the Catholic Church under National Socialism. While still a postdoc, he co-authored a widely publicized critique of Jesuit Gustav Gundlach’s justification on theological grounds of a war of nuclear deterrence. In 1968, he was the first to publish a German edition of De Libertate Religiosa, the final declaration of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), and provided an authoritative commentary.
Keywords
- Type
- Book Review Symposium: Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, Religion, Law, and Democracy
- Information
- Copyright
- © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University
References
1 Böckenförde, Ernst-Wolfgang, “The Rise of the State as a Process of Secularization [1967],” in Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, Religion, Law, and Democracy: Selected Writings, ed. Künkler, Mirjam and Stein, Tine, trans. Dunlap, Thomas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 152–67, at 167CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 Künkler, Mirjam and Stein, Tine, “Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde: Inner-Catholic Critic and Advocate of Open Neutrality,” Oxford Journal of Law and Religion 7, no. 1 (2018): 1–12 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Böckenförde, Ernst-Wolfgang, “German Catholicism in 1933,” trans. Schmandt, Raymond, CrossCurrents 11, no. 3 (1961): 283–304 Google Scholar. See also a new translation: Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, “German Catholicism in 1933: A Critical Examination [1961],” in Künkler and Stein, Religion, Law, and Democracy, 77–104.
4 Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde and Robert Spaemann, “Die Zerstörung der naturrechtlichen Kriegslehre. Erwiderung an P. Gustav Gundlach” [The destruction of the natural law doctrine of war. Response to Father Gustav Gundlach], in Atomare Kampfmittel und christliche Ethik. Diskussionsbeiträge deutscher Katholiken [Nuclear weapons and Christian ethics. Contributions to the discussion by German Catholics], ed. Rudolf Fleischmann et al. (Munich: Kösel, 1960), 161–96; Böckenförde, Ernst-Wolfgang and Spaemann, Robert, “Christliche Moral und atomare Kampfmittel” [Christian morality and nuclear weapons], Militärseelsorge. Zeitschrift des Katholischen Militärbischofsamts, no. 3 (1961): 267–301 Google Scholar; Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde and Robert Spaemann, “Noch einmal. Atomare Kampfmittel und christliche Ethik” [Once again. Nuclear Weapons and Christian Ethics], Militärseelsorge. Zeitschrift des Katholischen Militärbischofsamts, no. 4 (1962): 213–29.
5 Böckenförde, Ernst-Wolfgang, introduction to Zweites Vatikanisches Ökumenisches Konzil. Erklärung über die Religionsfreiheit [Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. Declaration on Religious Freedom] (Münster: Aschendorff, 1968), 5–21 Google Scholar.
6 Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, “A Christian in the Office of Constitutional Judge [1999],” in Künkler and Stein, Religion, Law, and Democracy, 280–87. See also Michael Hollerich’s comment on this essay: Michael Hollerich, introduction to “A Christian in the Office of Constitutional Judge: Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde on Religion and Democracy,” trans. Thomas Dunlap, Commonweal, December 28, 2020, https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/christian-office-constitutional-judge.
7 See one of the most important articles of his career: Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, “The Fundamental Right of Freedom of Conscience [1969],” in Künkler and Stein, Religion, Law, and Democracy, 168–98.
8 See Nicoletti, Michele, “Religious Freedom and the Ethos of Democracy in Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde,” Journal of Law and Religion 37, no. 3 (2022) (this issue)Google Scholar.
9 Paul VI, Lumen Gentium [Dogmatic constitution of the church] (November 21, 1964), para. 12, https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html.
10 Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, “On the Authority of Papal Encyclicals: The Example of Pronouncements on Religious Freedom [2006],” in Künkler and Stein, Religion, Law and Democracy, 288–306, at 305. Note, however, that in this article, Böckenförde also shows that the 1983 reformed code of canon law placed severe limitations on inner-Catholic discussion about doctrine, in that its reformed Article 752 introduced “the duty of obedience of the intellect and will” even to the non-infallible parts of the papal magisterium whereas the code of 1917 had established only “the duty to avoid” all errors bordering on heresy. Böckenförde, “On the Authority of Papal Encyclicals,” 303.
11 Nicoletti, “Religious Freedom and the Ethos of Democracy in Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde.”
12 Faggioli, Massimo, “Transatlantic Catholic Gap: Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde and John Courtney Murray on State and Society,” Journal of Law and Religion 37, no. 3 (2022) (this issue)Google Scholar.
13 Faggioli, “Transatlantic Catholic Gap.”
14 Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, “Abolition of Section 218 of the Criminal Code? Reflections on the Current Debate about the Prohibition of Abortion in German Criminal Law [1971],” in Künkler and Stein, Religion, Law and Democracy, 318–38.
15 The formula is taken from the second abortion decision of the Federal Constitutional Court in 1993: BVerfGE, 88, 203—Abortion II (Schwangerschaftsabbruch II) (1993), English translation and commentary in Kommers, Donald P. and Miller, Russell A., The Constitutional Jurisprudence of the Federal Republic of Germany (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012), 387–93Google Scholar (see especially head note 4 at 387 and head note 11 at 389).
16 Demel, Sabine, “Donum Vitae: An Association External to the Church? A Rebuttal from a Personal and Theological Perspective,” Journal of Law and Religion 37, no. 3 (2022) (this issue)Google Scholar.
17 Demel, “Donum Vitae.”
18 Demel, quoting canon 215 of the Codex Iuris Canonici [Code of Canon Law] (1983).
19 “Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde und Robert Spaemann. Ein Gespräch” [Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde and Robert Spaemann. A conversation], Zur Debatte, no. 5 (2013): 9–14, at 11, https://www.kath-akademie-bayern.de/fileadmin/user_upload/debatte_2013-5.pdf.
20 Pangalangan, Raul C., “On Böckenförde’s ‘A Christian in the Office of Constitutional Judge,’” Journal of Law and Religion 37, no. 3 (2022) (this issue)Google Scholar.
21 Pangalangan, “On Böckenförde’s ‘A Christian in the Office of Constitutional Judge.’”
22 Pangalangan.
23 McDonagh, Philip, “The Böckenförde Dictum, Aristotle’s Koinōnia, and the Debate on the Future of Europe,” Journal of Law and Religion 37, no. 3 (2022) (this issue)Google Scholar.