The reunification of Germany is prompting the restructuring of the former East German (GDR) legal system. In theory, East Germany's legal transformation was sudden and total: on the day of Germany's reunification, the GDR's former socialist legal system was replaced by the West German model of the rule of law. But in practice, reunification could not bring about the immediate exchange of one legal culture for its opposite. The German Unification Treaty, sensitive to adjustment problems, therefore restricts the applicability of many West German statutes in the eastern half of the country, extends the validity of East German statutes for a limited period of time, and even allows for the temporary survival of East German courts, and the continued employment of certain East German judges. This project examines the effects of this historical clash of two fundamentally opposed legal cultures in one specific locale: the Potsdam city court district. It uses ethnographic methods, specifically court observations and interviews with various participants in the legal process, including East German judges and prosecutors, West German guest judges and guest prosecutors, West and East German attorneys, East German lay assessors, and (predominately) East German litigants. The project is significant in providing an in-depth analysis of legal reform underway in Germany and a number of former socialist states, focusing on how formerly socialist citizens and professionals adjust to the rule of law, providing insights about what remnants of socialist legal thought and behavior are most likely to surface under the new legal system, and revealing how these remnants impact the reform effort. In addition, the project advances the study of legal consciousness by revealing the role that the rule of law plays in restructuring notions of social order and change when a society abandons its ideological identity.
