The Making of a ‘58er 57
of integration thus was ideally matched to the demands of the pub-
lic and the profession.^136 It was not until the 1970s that the number
of lawyers who had taught and administered law during the Third
Reich dwindled sufficiently to permit unbiased study of the posi-
tivism question.^137 Smend’s intellectual hegemony on the Court in
the 1950s resulted in decisions that alienated Habermas from the
Court until 1958 , when the famous Lüth judgment began to change
everything.
(^136) Michael Stolleis,“Die Staatsrechtslehre der fünfziger Jahre,” in Das Lüth-
Urteil aus (rechts)historischer Sicht: die Konflikte um Veit Harlan und die
Grundrechtsjudikatur des Bundesverfassungsgerichts, ed. Thomas Henne
(Berlin: BW V, 2005 ), 297.
(^137) See Schlink, “Why Carl Schmitt?” 435.