Abstract

Legal relationships can be found across all levels of law and in all fields of law. The present volume takes up this observation by establishing the legal relationship as a key concept, a fundamental category of legal system building, and a doctrinal framework of legal order. However, the approach, based on a legal relationship, encounters deeply rooted reservations in parts of constitutional law scholarship, extending to concerns about an erosion both of the state and state authority. The ongoing debates are the subject of a German-Austrian research project that examines positive law with regard to the existence and significance of legal relationships. The analyses confirm their omnipresence within the multilevel legal order and point to perspective-expanding effects at numerous key issues of legal theory, doctrine, methodology, and practice within an emerging legal relationship scholarship.