The Superlegality of Liberal Democracy: A Genealogy of Contemporary Juridification

Juridification is becoming a leading theme in political theory as well as in public discourse because of the growing importance of courts in the political life of contemporary societies. This article espouses the hypothesis that juridification first emerged in the Weimar Republic, the true laboratory of contemporary constitutional democracies. However, it also complicates this hypothesis by arguing that Weimar produced two distinct types of juridification. While such a historical-conceptual analysis is intended to clarify how the phenomenon affected the German system of government at the time, it also allows for a more nuanced understanding of contemporary juridification. Indeed, the article concludes by presenting its currently dominant version, the politics of judicial rights protection, which owes much to pre–World War II debates about the role of courts and fundamental rights vis-à-vis the principle of parliamentary supremacy.