Gustav Radbruch about 1920
Gustav Radbruch (Lübeck, November 21, 1878 - Heidelberg, November 23, 1949) was a German lawyer. From October 1921 to November 1922 he was Minister of Justice in the Weimar Republic.
Before World War II, he strongly aligned with normative legal positivism. Legal positivism believes in a sharp separation between morality and justice. After the war, however, he realized that justice and morality can not be easily separated. He reasoned as follows: Judges must follow the law. However, the legislative power was in the hands of the Nazis, and they wrote unharmed laws. Consequently, the judges had to apply inhumane laws. Radbruch spoke of legal injustice.
Radbruch worked this into a familiar formula, the Radbruch formula.
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