Alternativen der Rechtsberatung: Dienstleistung, Fürsorge und kollektive Selbsthilfe
This paper criticizes the theoretical background of different forms of legal aid to socially and financially underprivileged groups. The existing patterns of the attorney-client type of legal service and the public provision of legal services have different effects on the relationships between a client and his counsellor and the manner in which a counsellor defines his client’s interest and acts to protect them. Legal services provided through union legal aid offices (die “Arbeitersekretariate”) around the turn of the century give a historical example of collective forms of legal services. For the same reasons that led to the development of socially protective regulations within the substantive law, the legal services offered by attorneys proved to be unsatisfactory for the socially underprivileged groups. There were two historical responses to this problem: A collective representation of interests and a welfare orientated “rule of law” approach (“Rechtsfriedensbewegung”, which constituted a countermovement to the “Arbeitersekretariate”). The ‘rule of law’ movement attempted to achieve a conflict-free integration of all social contradictions. Yet another way to provide social services has been followed by the British trade unions. Unlike the German unions they were not incorporated into the formal legal system, a fact which allowed them to develop their own “extra-legal” forms of negotiations with regard to labour conflicts.
Individualistic and Collective Legalization: The Theory and Practice of Legal Advice for Workers in Prefascist Germany
Publisher Summary This chapter discusses individualistic and collective legalization: the theory and practice of legal advice for workers in pre-fascist Germany. Legal institutions for the underprivileged, especially legal aid programs, are analyzed by some as a means of suppressing and disarming the working class. On the political right, some see bureaucratization and tutelage endangering individual freedom, whereas others claim that they enhance the public welfare by ensuring social peace. This chapter focuses on the research into the legal institutions of workers in prefascist Germany seeks to demonstrate that the apparent ambiguity of the politics of legalization, which is a result of excluding from the analysis two essential dimensions: history and class struggle. Legalization does not exist in the abstract. If law as coercive power, as tamed despotism (Hofmann, 1968: 1), will die one day, it will die only because it has attained its highest form. Therefore, legalization must be developed in accordance with the development (Vergesellschaftung) of society into higher and socially more adequate forms. Delegalization is meaningful only in the context of this development. It is always a step in the legalization process, either backward to readapt social reality to antiquated legal forms or forward to develop higher forms of action that produce higher forms of legalization.
The Area of Freedom, Security and Justice ten years on: Successes and future challenges under the Stockholm Programme. CEPS Paperbacks. June 2010
This book celebrates the tenth anniversary of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ) by bringing together the views of key practitioners and policy-makers who have played an outstanding role in thinking about and shaping EU policies on freedom, security and justice. 
 
Ten years ago, the member states transferred competences to the EU for law and policy-making in the fields of immigration, asylum and border controls, and began the transfer process for criminal justice and policing. This decade of European cooperation on AFSJ policies has experienced very dynamic convergence, the enactment of a large body of European law and the setting-up of numerous EU agencies working in these domains. Such dynamism in policy-making has not been without challenges and vulnerabilities, however. As this collective volume shows, the main dilemmas that lie ahead relate to an effective (while more plural) institutional framework under the Treaty of Lisbon, stronger judicial scrutiny through a greater role for national courts and the Court of Justice in Luxembourg, better mechanisms for evaluating and monitoring the implementation of EU AFSJ law and a more solid fundamental rights strategy. The contributions in this volume address the progress achieved so far in these policy areas, identify the challenges for future European cooperation in the AFSJ and put forward possible paths for making more progress in the next generation of the EU’s AFSJ.