Nicht für das Examen lernen wir? Über die Sozialisations- und Disziplinierungseffekte juristischer Prüfungen

Making Legal Knowledge Work: Practising Proportionality in the German Repetitorium

“…For one, these doctrines’ apparent informality and common-sense-like qualities are a strange fit with the highly formalized, technical demands of the problem-cases, for which the intricate private law problem based on the German Civil Code remains the archetypical example. As is the case for law students in other jurisdictions, German law students too are largely taught not to speak in overtly substantive terms, like ‘fairness’ or ‘justice’ (Bourdieu, 1992: 828). In addition, the reasoning operations required, in particular the ‘balancing’ prescribed by proportionality's last step will seem, again at least at first sight, rather different from the syllogistic ‘ Subsumption ’ that students will have encountered as the main reasoning tool throughout their studies.…”

“…In such discourse ‘the simplicity and transparency of common sense’ merges with a ‘rhetoric of scientificity’ into a ‘depoliticized political discourse’. This, then, is ‘the language of nature … characterized by a rhetoric of impartiality, marked by the effects of symmetry, balance, the golden mean’ (Bourdieu, 1992: 131–132). It would be difficult to give a more apt description of the work proportionality does in German public law.…”

“…One corollary of this designation is that the exams concluding these studies are 'State-', rather than mere 'university', or even 'bar', exams, organized by public authorities in the different German Länder. In fact, until 2002, grades obtained at university law faculties were entirely irrelevant to the final grade obtained in the so-called 'First State Exam' (since then called the 'First Juridical Exam') (Böning, 2013;van de Loo and Stehmeier, 2013). Alongside their law faculty studies, which in Germany are tuition-free, the vast majority of law studentsby common estimates around 80% to 90% -also enrol with commercial providers, or 'Repetitoren' to prepare for their State Exam (Die Zeit, 1994;FAZ, 2011;Kilian, 2016).…”