Backgrounds and references

The preamble of the lege artis Academy e.V.

The law is indispensable as a constituent element of the state and society. His creation is a cultural achievement of the first order and a foundation of democratic coexistence.

Nonetheless, the law is endangered in many ways. Complexity and sophistication are increasingly viewed negatively. The law loses its appreciation if its practice falls short of the claim to derive the decision of specific conflicts of interest from comprehensible, abstract general rules. The appreciation of the law is therefore directly related to the qualifications of its users.

Well-known voices have called for the law to be strengthened in order to preserve the democratic constitutional state. A central element of this is the quality of legal training. The association believes that striving for excellence - along with other initiatives - is both sensible and necessary. The focus is on two aspects:

1. High-quality legal work based on a central skill: the sovereign mastery of the legal method.

• These and only these allow the practicing lawyer to grasp the law with understanding and to apply it to real life issues. Only with it can facts that are available for legal assessment or structuring be properly assessed from the perspective of the addressee, namely by (i) careful recording of the question, (ii) differentiated clarification of the relevant real life facts and (iii) the establishment of the relevant legal review standard based on statute and law (Art. 20 III GG) in the light of case law and literature.
• In the university education there is no focus on imparting this qualification. The basic features of the legal method are presented at the beginning and then mastery of them is assumed to be a native language ability. In terms of substance, however, the transformation of a legal text into a case-related examination standard is a demanding task in which abstract legal terms are used and transformed from generally applicable law into a specific case. The legal method requires, among other things, Ability to concentrate, linguistic sensitivity, logical thinking and a high level of abstraction; and the willingness to reflect on your own and other people's prior understandings. Dealing with alternative interpretations requires a sense of context and proportions as well as thinking in terms of purposes, interests and principles.
• Satisfying these requirements requires intensive communication through instruction and training, in which a sequence is obvious: starting with the basic training in the application of the law based on evidence cases to advanced argumentative techniques in cases of doubt. The association therefore aims at the mediation, instruction and training of the legal method in the indicated sense. In this way, the sponsored should acquire the ability to understand and apply the law with understanding.
• This realizes extremely significant values: In particular the canon of values ​​of the Basic Law: the binding of executive power and jurisdiction to law and order, basic rights, self-determination of the person and the other principles of the democratic constitutional state. The association is committed to these values ​​and would like to promote and protect them.

2. Teaching is as good as its teacher:

• A legal education leading to excellence is based not only on the law and the law (Art. 20 III GG) but also on a strong relationship to reality and thus to practice. In training, professionally active lawyers can and should therefore be given a higher priority than before, because they are able to report first-hand about the importance of the sovereign mastery of the legal method in the legal professions and how their application is practically represents. One focus should be placed on the legal work.
• The association aims to support such training events financially so that suitable teachers can not only work on a voluntary basis and at their own expense and thus to an irregular and small extent in training, but can also work (part-time).
• The association also intends to train people who are active in training and further education or who want to work in order to promote the realization of the association's purposes.

3. According to the famous dictum of the former judge at the Federal Constitutional Court, Wolfgang Böckenförde, the liberal, secular state lives on conditions that it cannot guarantee itself. According to Böckenförde, the state can only exist as a free state if the freedom it grants its citizens is regulated from within, based on the moral substance of the individual and the homogeneity of society. The state cannot attempt to guarantee these internal regulatory forces by means of legal coercion and authoritative command without giving up its freedom.

• The founders of the association currently consider this assessment to be just as accurate as it is central. The association therefore aims at the education and training of such personalities who, through their integrity, sovereignty and their actions, support the democratic constitutional state of the Federal Republic of Germany and defend it against the multiple challenges now and in the future.
• An indispensable partner of the law is the trust of the citizens in the functionality of the state organs, especially in judges and lawyers. Only a practice of lawfulness that is lived and made transparent by these organs of the administration of justice is suitable to guarantee this trust of citizens and companies in the judiciary and the rest of the state authority. Only through trust in the - including itself - regulating power of state power through statute and law can the constitutional state expect respect and compliance with its rules. The state as sovereign lives in the law-based sovereignty of its legal practitioners.

The above-mentioned premises are combined in the efforts of the association to advertise material and immaterial support in order to be able to effectively pursue its statutory purposes.

The complete statutes can be found here