RADBRUCH’S JUS-NATURALISTIC OVERCOMING OF LEGAL POSITIVISM

Abstract

Germany legal thought gave in the twentieth century several names of world renown: Emil Lask, Hans Kelsen, Max Weber, Karl Schmidt, Niklas Luman, Arthur Kaufman, Ernst Eduard Hirsch and others. All they have left a significant mark in theory, sociology and philosophy of law. And they all had very distinctive, and - for historians of law - interesting, personal biographies and destinies. Among such distinguished legal minds there is also Gustav Radbruch (G. Radbruch, Luebeck 1878 - Heidelberg 1949), who, after severe ruptures in his private and social life after Nazis came to power, made ​​a complete turnaround in his philosophy of law with his famous legal-philosophical writing: "Five Minutes of Philosophy of Law" (1945). Radbruch meticulously questioned the rigid positivist principle that even "the most vicious and inhuman law should apply until it is in effective" and pleaded instead for jus-naturalistic principle of justice in a "supra-statutory law."