Felix Kaufmann · 1933
Felix Kaufmann’s journal book review assesses Ehrenzweig’s contribution to criminal-law doctrine through the linked problems of unlawfulness, culpability, and mistake. It moves from a diagnosis of contemporary legal methodology to a compressed account of Ehrenzweig’s conceptual revisions, then notes their application to the Austrian draft criminal code of 1927. Kaufmann recommends the study as unusually substantial for its brevity, while reserving judgment about whether every argument meets the highest standards of conceptual rigor.
The opening places the study against the legacy of the Free Law School’s attack on Begriffsjurisprudenz: the doctrine that logical reasoning from statutory language can yield an unambiguous judicial decision in every case. Kaufmann acknowledges the movement’s lasting influence on German and Austrian theory and practice, but sees danger in carrying its corrective too far. Recognition that legislation cannot say everything can become an excuse for failing to determine essential legal concepts:
Diese liegt vor allem darin, daß der Gesetzgeber, in dem Bewußtsein nicht alles sagen zu können, zu wenig sagt und vor allem dort nichts sagt, wo es sich um die Festlegung von Legaldefinitionen handelt, welche eine Stellungnahme zu Fragen bedeuten würden, die in der Rechtswissenschaft stark umstritten sind.
English translation: This danger lies above all in the fact that the legislator, conscious of being unable to say everything, says too little and, above all, says nothing where establishing legal definitions would require taking a position on questions that are highly disputed in legal scholarship.
For Kaufmann, the general parts of German and Austrian draft criminal codes exemplify this difficulty in their treatment of unlawfulness, culpability, and the corresponding positive and negative elements of an offense. Scholarly proliferation has not necessarily brought better analysis. Ehrenzweig’s work matters because it offers a concentrated intervention into precisely these unsettled foundations.
Kaufmann presents its central results as challenges to distinctions conventionally used to organize criminal responsibility:
Eine Unterscheidung von Rechtswidrigkeit und Tatbestandsmäßigkeit, und damit von Irrtum über Rechtswidrigkeit und Irrtum über Tatbestandsmäßigkeit ist nicht zu rechtfertigen. Die scharfe Scheidung zwischen Notwehr als Rechtfertigungsgrund und Notstand als Entschuldigungsgrund ist nicht aufrecht zu erhalten; überhaupt können Entschuldigungsgründe von Rechtfertigungsgründen nicht rechtswesentlich unterschieden werden.
English translation: A distinction between unlawfulness and fulfillment of the statutory elements of an offense, and thus between mistake concerning unlawfulness and mistake concerning fulfillment of those elements, cannot be justified. The sharp separation between self-defense as a ground of justification and necessity as a ground of excuse cannot be maintained; indeed, grounds of excuse cannot be distinguished from grounds of justification in a legally essential respect.
These propositions connect the classification of conduct with the classification of mistakes about it. Ehrenzweig also introduces Berechtung, a term for an act’s relation to a legal rule that makes it legally valid without making it legally permitted. Kaufmann reports this distinction without elaborating a separate defense of it. The resulting ideal legal rule combines a primary offense with an exception: someone fulfilling the primary statutory elements should be punished unless acting in necessity caused by an attack lacking Berechtung.
The consequences for mistake are the doctrinal center of the review:
Das Ergebnis für die Irrtumslehre lautet: Unbeachtlich ist der Irrtum über den Inhalt des primären Tatbestandes, beachtlich aber ist jeder andere Irrtum. Doch muß der „Irrtum über das Zutreffen eines sekundären Tatbestandes, um beachtlich zu sein, zum Rechtswidrigkeitsirrtum, zu dem an sich unbeachtlichen Irrtum über das gegenwärtige Gesetz hinzutreten“.
English translation: The result for the doctrine of mistake is as follows: a mistake concerning the content of the primary statutory elements is legally irrelevant, but every other mistake is legally relevant. However, the “mistake concerning whether secondary statutory elements are satisfied must, in order to be legally relevant, accompany the mistake concerning unlawfulness, the mistake concerning the law currently in force that is in itself legally irrelevant.”
The qualification prevents the initial contrast between irrelevant and relevant mistakes from being read as an unrestricted rule. Kaufmann then records Ehrenzweig’s application of this thesis to impossible attempts, his analysis of the pertinent provisions of the 1927 Austrian draft, and his proposed redrafting of its mistake provisions. The review’s final endorsement is therefore practical as well as theoretical: the study deserves attention from criminal-law scholars and practitioners because its conceptual reconstruction reaches into legislative formulation. Kaufmann nevertheless preserves the distinction between recognizing a valuable intervention and accepting every step of its reasoning.
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