Recht wissenschaftlich

In Germany, if students want to study law, they enrol for a degree in 'legal science'. This conception of law and legal scholarship as a science is rooted in the European tradition of a 'scientia iuris'. However, there seem to be differences between the discipline's perception of itself as a science and the majority of academic circles, which seem to feel estranged by the discipline's peculiarities. This became most evident when the German Council of Science and Humanities called upon the discipline of law to open up to the university sector and embrace its standards in 2012. As regards the transnationalisation of law and legal scholarship, it also has to be asked to what extent the subject of law in Germany can or should adhere to its traditional understanding of itself as a 'legal science'. Against this background, this study explores the question of how law could and should be taught as a science. To tackle this question, the author evaluates higher education literature and studies the pre-conceptions of law teachers empirically. She proceeds to discuss her empirical findings critically and then de-velops didactic principles accordingly.