Gesetz, Politik und Wissenschaft

German private law has been framed as a domain of politically neutral legal reasoning, yet a closer historical analysis sheds doubts on this assumption. This study explores how legal doctrine – from the early days of the Historical School, through the Wertungsjurisprudenz until controversies in the 1980ies and 90ies – sought to maintain the illusion of an autonomous system of private law. By examining the evolution of private autonomy as a foundational principle and the tensions between the binding codification, judicial creativity and the authority of academic doctrine, the work sheds light on the methodological challenges of contemporary private law theory.