Sigmund Feilbogen, Unsere Rechtsstudien (1887)

Sigmund Feilbogen’s monograph examines how Austrian legal education might secure sustained intellectual work without sacrificing academic freedom. Its origins connect the argument to public debate within the legal profession:

Die vorliegende Schrift ist der erweiterte Abdruck eines Vortrages, welcher am 1. April d. J. in der Wiener Juristischen Gesellschaft gehalten und am ausführlichsten in der „Wiener Allgemeinen Zeitung“ vom 12. April d. J. reproducirt wurde.

English translation: The present work is the expanded reprint of a lecture delivered on 1 April of this year at the Vienna Juridical Society and reproduced most extensively in the “Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung” of 12 April of this year.

Drawing on his experience preparing examination candidates and observing French and English institutions, Feilbogen distinguishes improvements to existing institutions from schemes that would dismantle them. Curricular completeness, regular study, and intellectual engagement must advance together; heavier workloads and compulsory attendance cannot by themselves produce an educated jurist.

Part I addresses the ministerial reform questionnaire and the Vienna law faculty’s proposals. Feilbogen supports an introductory course in legal methodology, earlier instruction in political economy, and compulsory administrative law. Economics should enable students to consider legislation’s purposes, not merely interpret its wording. The place of public law consequently becomes a central curricular question:

Bei diesem Punkte wird insbesondere die künftig dem allgemeinen und österreichischen Staatsrechte (Verfassungs- und Verwaltungsrechte) in der Studienordnung einzuräumende Stellung zu würdigen sein.

English translation: On this point, particular consideration must be given to the place that general and Austrian public law (constitutional and administrative law) should occupy in the curriculum in future.

Feilbogen retains a common university education for judicial and administrative careers, followed by professional specialization. Accommodating new subjects requires selective compression: German imperial and legal history and canon law should each occupy one semester. Interpretation of selected sources should replace excessive memorization of names, dates, and bibliographical details.

This is a renewal of historical understanding, not its abandonment. German legal history provides a comparative corrective to Roman law; European constitutional history and universal legal history would widen that comparison. Feilbogen likewise resists removing practical philosophy and Austrian history. Ethics clarifies the purposes and legitimacy of coercion, while history should foster understanding of Austria’s multinational state. His educational liberalism thus includes a political commitment to national moderation and to a polity he presents as preparation for wider international union.

Part II turns from curricular content to the conditions of learning. Against Schmoller’s attendance controls, Feilbogen locates the crucial difficulty in the abrupt passage from school discipline to university independence. Beginners cannot already possess an informed attachment to a subject whose practical world remains unfamiliar:

Was weiß aber der absolvirte Gymnasiast von Prozessen, Verträgen, Erbschaften, Grundbüchern, Steuern, Zöllen und überhaupt von dem großartigen Getriebe der Rechtspflege und der Staatsverwaltung?

English translation: But what does the secondary-school graduate know of lawsuits, contracts, inheritances, land registers, taxes, customs duties, and, in general, of the vast machinery of the administration of justice and of the state?

Remote examinations and apparently irrelevant historical material compound this initial distance. Compulsory attendance confuses bodily presence with intellectual work. Feilbogen instead proposes greater independence in the final school year, weekly first-year tutorials, written semester examinations, and subsequent annual examinations. Tutorials would supplement professorial lectures while supporting junior teachers. A more regular academic calendar and division of the overloaded judicial examination would discourage intermittent cramming.

Academic freedom, on this account, requires institutional support. Informed choice of lecturers, registration after attendance, and free access to courses in other faculties would strengthen self-directed education. Such breadth has professional value: lawyers must understand the occupations and interests they represent. It also preserves imagination and moral responsiveness against the narrowing effects of memorization and technical deduction.

Part III examines practical exercises and the precedence of historical over contemporary law. Feilbogen supports supervised casework but questions practice undertaken before students know domestic law. He also distinguishes mastery of Roman legal rules from acquisition of the Roman jurists’ interpretive skill, which requires accessible source collections.

His culminating proposal concerns the student’s first encounter with law. Criminal law, through its connections with public discussion, moral judgment, courts, and professional aspiration, offers a more accessible introduction than an exclusive emphasis on private law. Early engagement should generate the interest that later sustains historical inquiry. Together with a graduated transition from school to university, this proposal makes autonomy an educational achievement that institutions must actively enable.