Change of function: reception and actualization of a concept: critical theory and law

• Grant number: 18/23324-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Start date: February 12, 2019
• End date: August 11, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Law - Theory of Law
• Principal Investigator: Samuel Rodrigues Barbosa
• Grantee: Gabriel Busch de Brito
• Supervisor: Klaus Guenther
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Direito (FD). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany
• Associated to the scholarship: 17/25324-4 - Change of function: reception and actualisation of a concept. critical theory and law, BP.MS

Abstract

The aim of the research is to study the constitution of a field of critical theory of law in Weimar through the collective reception and actualization of Karl Renner's Die Rechtsinstitute des Privatrechts und ihre soziale Funktion by a group of authors reunited around Hugo Sinzheimer - Franz Neumann, Ernst Fraenkl and Otto Kahn-Freund. In order to do this I intend to (i) present Renner´s original critical model, with special attention to his concept of change of function, (ii) organize the Weimarian works of Neumann, Fraenkl and Kahn-Freund with the aim of (iii) presenting the reactualisation o Renner' s model by Kahn-Freund in his Funktionswandel des Arbeitsrecht as a - but not the only possible - synthesis of that body of literature, again with special attention to the renewed conception of change of function. This would not only show the reactualisation of Renner to be a collective enterprise, which establishes the field of critical theory of law in Weimar, but also allows for an articulated and enriched presentation of a highly innovative, although fragmentary, group of works. It would further show that the idea of a critical theory of law was, from the outset, synonymous with a critically oriented empirical and historical-sociological analysis of the law and its institutions, that is, with a sociology of law, normatively grounded on the (internal) link between law and democracy. (AU)