82 Habermas: An intellectual biography
The value language employed by the Court in Lüth therefore was an
old medium, but it carried a fundamentally new message.^100
The Schmitt school despaired of the high court’s high-profile
decision, which they believed would erect an illegitimate “tyranny
of values” over West German society.^101 Schmitt decried, “Value-
philosophizing jurists in 1958 cannot escape the charge of anachro-
nism.... [W]e don’t live in 1928 anymore.”^102 As Forsthoff wrote to
a colleague privately, “[Schmitt]... is allergic to hearing the word
‘va lue.’”^103 Given that the Smend school distanced itself from the
Lüth judgment, it was ironic that Forsthoff and Schmitt saw in it a
great victory for their long-time rival.^104 In a rebuttal of Forsthoff’s
critique of the new “tyranny of values,” Smend’s student, Alexander
Hollerbach, defended Lüth’s conclusion but also emphasized the dif-
ferences between Lüth and the current position of the Smend school.
The contemporary jurists’ talk of a “value system” was not, accord-
ing to Hollerbach, an “abstract, crypto-natural law... schema of
intransigent closedness” but simply a method for producing herme-
neutic coherence.^105
For Habermas in 1961 , the Lüth judgment was not the progressive
landmark most of today’s legal scholars would have it be. While he
appreciated the high court’s embrace in Lüth of an “objective right”
to freedom of the press, he seems to have retained his Abendrothian
skepticism toward the paternalism of the Federal Constitutional
Court. The Court used the same language in its 1956 ban on the
Communist Party, a decision of which Abendroth was strongly
c r i t i c a l.^106 Habermas’s skepticism is apparent in the essay, “Natural
Law and Revolution” (1963), in which he takes a view of basic rights(^100) Rainer Wahl, “Lüth und die Folgen: Ein Urteil als Weichenstellung für die
Rechtsentwicklung,” in Henne, Lüth-Urteil, 371–97.
(^101) Schmitt, “Tyrannei der Werte – Überlegungen eines Juristen zur Wert-
Philosophie” [1960], in Säkularisierung und Utopie – Ebracher Studien. Ernst
Forsthoff zum 65. Geburtstag (Stuttgart, 1967), 37–62.
(^102) Ibid, 40.
(^103) Böckenförde to Schnur (October 11, 1962), Nachlass Schnur. Cited in
Günther, Denken, 129.
(^104) Forsthoff, “Umbildung des Verfassungsgesetzes,”[1959], in Ve r fa ss ung:
Beiträge zur Verfassungstheorie, ed. Manfred Friedrich (Darmstadt:
Wissenschafliche Buchgesellschaft, 1978), 117–52.
(^105) Alexander Hollerbach, “Auflösung der Rechtsstaatlichen Verfassung? Zu
Ernst Forsthoffs Abhandlung ‘Die Umbildung des Verfassungsgesetzes’
”[1960], in Verfassung: Beiträge zur Verfassungstheorie, ed. Manfred Friedrich
(Darmstadt: Wissenschafliche Buchgesellschaft, 1978), 171.
(^106) Abendroth, “KPD Urteil,” 139ff.