Schreber’s Law: Jurisprudence and Judgment in Transition

Reappraises – and reinstates – the jurisprudence of Judge Schreber, looking beyond mental health to their distinguished contribution to legal theory • The first legal analysis of the Memoirs of Judge Schreber • An exemplary case study of the intersection of psychoanalysis and jurisprudence • A novel account of the pathology in law and the originality of a highly symptomatic juridical theology • Reinstates and emplaces Schreber’s jurisprudence in a modern context of legal philosophy Daniel Paul Schreber (1842–1911) was a senior German judge and jurist who formulated a unique juridical theology of private life and developed a critical account of oikonomia, the practice of governance and administration. But their theoretical work was largely ignored due to their mental illness and desire to be a woman in a time inhospitable to transitions. Now, Schreber’s Law looks beyond Judge Schreber's mental health to reappraise their distinguished contribution to legal theory. Peter Goodrich evaluates Schreber’s jurisprudence by analysing their Memoirs of my Nervous Illness (1903) and their interpreters in detail. He sets their work in the context of both the neo-Kantian pure science of fin de siècle German jurisprudence and 21st-century legal theory. In this way, Goodrich shows how Schreber’s work challenges the legal thought of his era and opens up a potentially vital approach to contemporary jurisprudence.