“Economic Constitution”: On the Roots of a Legal Concept
Our world is in abundance of most different kinds of legal systems, but none of them is as thoroughly imbued with constitutional ideas and categories as the American law. Thus, the dedication of an article dealing with a concept of constitutional law to an American judge and scholar seems not inappropriate. The contribution focuses on a legal term of specifically continental European thinking, the concept of "Wirtschaftsverfassung" or, translated literally, of "economic constitution." I will try to explain on which premises and under which circumstances this legal term has been developed during the first decades of our century.