Kenneth F. Ledford, associate professor of history and law, will lead the next Faculty Work-in-Progress lecture, “Organizing Justice: Forming the Preußischer Richterverein and Advocating for Judges.”
For years after the reorganization of the judiciary in Prussia and Germany in 1879, Prussian judges chafed at the higher pay and status granted to their colleagues in the general administrative bureaucracies, who had been their classmates in school and while studying at university. Ledford will discuss the social and cultural circumstances that in 1909 led those Prussian judges to defy the pressure from their boss, the Prussian Ministry of Justice, and to form a professional association that increasingly toward 1914 pressured the government to equalize pay and status for judicial and administrative officials? This episode of professional organization weaves together important aspects of the histories of the German state, the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary and the cultural values of the German educated middle class in the final years of the German Empire.
The free, public lecture will be held Feb. 23 at 4:30 p.m. in Clark Hall 206. A reception will begin at 4:15 p.m.