Karl Theodor von Inama-Sternegg: Review of Wilhelm Krais’s Commentary (1880)

Inama-Sternegg’s review evaluates Wilhelm Krais’s commentary on the Bavarian law of 8 August 1878 establishing an administrative court and regulating administrative litigation. Its central judgment is that Krais successfully combines practical guidance with scholarly explanation. The review moves from the reciprocal influence of legislation and legal scholarship to the commentary’s comparative introduction, its account of Bavarian institutional development, and its exposition of jurisdiction and procedure.

The opening treats legislative reform as a stimulus to more concrete legal thinking. Questions of judicial organization, competence, and the enforcement of judgments had received insufficient attention in earlier, predominantly theoretical discussions. Legislative proposals and practitioners’ experience brought institutional feasibility and administrative needs into the scholarly argument:

Die wissenschaftliche Behandlung der Lehre von der Verwaltungsrechtspflege hat sich gerade seit dieser Zeit neuerer legislativer Arbeiten sehr zu ihren Gunsten verändert und hat damit den alten Satz von dem gedeihlichen Zusammenwirken von Theorie und Praxis auf's Neue erhärtet.

English translation: The scientific treatment of the doctrine of administrative jurisdiction has, precisely since this period of more recent legislative labours, changed very much to its own advantage, and has thereby confirmed anew the old proposition of the fruitful cooperation of theory and practice.

This interaction supplies the review’s criterion of assessment. A commentary should enable intellectual mastery of the law and independent judgment in its application. Inama-Sternegg finds that Krais meets this standard. His introduction explains the need for independent administrative justice in the modern constitutional state and surveys systems developed through theory and adopted by German legislatures. Comparisons with Austria, England, France, and Italy broaden the discussion, although excessive compression sometimes compromises clarity, particularly in explaining the relationship between Austria’s administrative court and its Reichsgericht.

The historical account traces Bavaria’s uneven separation of justice from administration. Separation advanced first in higher institutions, while lower authorities continued to combine judicial and administrative functions. Police jurisdiction and administrative adjudication of private disputes involving public interests preserved arrangements incompatible with a principled division of powers. The separation proclaimed in 1848 was realized only through the judicial organization law of 1861; special legislation also progressively returned cases to ordinary courts. Social legislation in 1867 intensified the need for administrative judicial protection, while Brater’s intellectual advocacy and parliamentary initiatives helped prepare the reform.

Inama-Sternegg then identifies the law’s decisive conceptual boundary: protection concerns legally grounded public rights and duties, not interests alone. Its specified jurisdiction covers claims that a right has been unlawfully denied or that an obligation lacks legal foundation. Institutional independence, however, is concentrated at the summit rather than established uniformly throughout the system:

Die Organisation der Verwaltungsrechtspflege schliesst sich in Baiern in den Unter- und Mittelinstanzen thunlichst an das bestehende System der Verwaltungsbehörden an und verlegt den Schwerpunkt der Verwaltungsrechtspflege in die Aufstellung eines selbständigen obersten, mit allen Rechten der Justizcollegien ausgestatteten Gerichtshofes.

English translation: In Bavaria the organization of administrative jurisdiction attaches itself, in the lower and intermediate instances, as far as practicable to the existing system of administrative authorities, and places the center of gravity of administrative jurisdiction in the establishment of an independent supreme court endowed with all the rights of the judicial collegia.

The supreme court decides the substance of appealed cases rather than merely quashing decisions. Its authority nevertheless excludes discretionary questions, and it relies on facts established below without taking evidence itself. A state prosecutor represents the public interest. These distinctions show how the reform combines judicial safeguards with continuing administrative structures and limits.

The review’s strongest praise ultimately concerns the commentary’s detailed legal groundwork:

Der Commentar entwickelt in der Einleitung mit voller Klarheit diese Grundzüge des Gesetzes in ihren Consequenzen, sein Hauptverdienst aber besteht jedenfalls in der ungemeinen Sorgfalt, mit der er für alle vierzig Fälle der verwaltungsgerichtlichen Competenz das einschlägige Material der verwaltungsrechtlichen Bestimmungen gesammelt und für die Darstellung verwerthet hat.

English translation: In its introduction the commentary develops with full clarity these fundamental features of the law in their consequences; its chief merit, however, lies in any case in the uncommon care with which, for all forty cases of administrative-court competence, it has collected the relevant material of the administrative-law provisions and turned it to account in its exposition.

Krais’s achievement thus lies both in clarifying the law’s governing principles and in assembling the dispersed provisions needed to apply its forty jurisdictional categories. The review makes this combination exemplary of administrative-law scholarship strengthened by practical institutional reform.