Gustav Radbruch (1878–1949) – German legal philosopher and politician, one of the leading representatives of neo-Kantianism in law. After the Second World War he formulated the famous „Radbruch formula”, according to which grossly unjust law loses its validity – a thought that still marks one of the main lines of dispute between positivism and natural law.
Texts in the „Archive”
Gustav Radbruch’s Antinomies of the Idea of Law in the Light of Immanuel Kant’s Antinomies of Pure Reason
Bartosz Szyler · Issue 4(29)/2021
An analysis of the antinomies of the idea of law in Radbruch – the tensions between justice, expediency and legal certainty – set against Kant’s antinomies of pure reason.
The Account of the Nature of Things in Gustav Radbruch’s Method of Legal Construction and the Assumptions of Legal Positivism
Zuzanna Krzykalska · Issue 4(29)/2021
A reconstruction and defence of Radbruch’s account of the „nature of things” as a form of legal thinking, and the question how far it can be reconciled with the assumptions of legal positivism.
Finding Legal Approaches to Dealing with the Past after the Fall of Communism
Christoph-Eric Mecke · Issue 3(44)/2025
How should crimes committed in the former socialist states be judged? The article approaches the question from legal theory and comparative law, drawing among others on the Radbruch formula.
See also the Legal Positivism and Natural Law collections.