Translating Weimar

How can a constitution imagine social revolution? This book answers this question by placing social rights at the center of the Weimar Constitution’s long journey to China. It tells a global legal history of how jurists and legislators used constitutional language to conceptualize 20th-century proje...

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Huvudupphov: Li, Fupeng
Materialtyp: Online
Språk:engelska
Utgiven: Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory 2026
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Länkar:ONIX_20260621T103020_9783944773544_2
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author Li, Fupeng
author_browse Li, Fupeng
author_facet Li, Fupeng
author_sort Li, Fupeng
collection Directory of Open Access Books
description How can a constitution imagine social revolution? This book answers this question by placing social rights at the center of the Weimar Constitution’s long journey to China. It tells a global legal history of how jurists and legislators used constitutional language to conceptualize 20th-century projects of social transformation. Moving between Germany and China, the book follows the Weimarer Reichsverfassung as it was read, translated, and rewritten by Chinese actors. Rather than treating the Weimar Constitution’s influence as a simple “reception” of foreign ideas, it reconstructs how Chinese jurists used debates on labor, welfare, and economic order to rethink what a social constitution could be – and what kind of social revolution it might legitimately guide. At the core of the analysis lies a structural shift: from the Weimar Constitution’s rights-based model of social order to the policy-oriented constitutionalism that came to characterize modern China. Drawing on multilingual archives and constitutional drafts, the study traces how the Weimar Constitution’s catalog of fundamental social rights was progressively reframed as Fundamental National Policies, transforming social rights into state programs, planning targets, and ideological commitments. Organized around the triad of space, time, and tradition, the book maps the routes by which German Staatsrechtslehre and the Weimar Constitution’s concept of social rights entered Chinese debates, shows how they were positioned within changing temporal narratives of crisis and revolution, and examines how they were negotiated in the encounter with Confucian statecraft, revolutionary nationalism, and socialist planning. In doing so, it offers a new framework for understanding how constitutions mediate social revolution through the cultural translation of rights into policies. The book will interest scholars and students of constitutional law, global legal history, and modern Chinese history who seek to understand how social rights traveled across borders – and how, in the process, they quietly remade the meaning of both “constitution” and “revolution” in the 20th century.
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spelling doab-20.500.12854ir-1777572026-06-22T05:05:58Z Translating Weimar Li, Fupeng GPLH Weimar Constitution China 20th-century Legal history Social transformation Legal transfer thema EDItEUR::L Law::LA Jurisprudence and general issues thema EDItEUR::L Law::LA Jurisprudence and general issues::LAF Systems of law thema EDItEUR::L Law::LA Jurisprudence and general issues::LAZ Legal history How can a constitution imagine social revolution? This book answers this question by placing social rights at the center of the Weimar Constitution’s long journey to China. It tells a global legal history of how jurists and legislators used constitutional language to conceptualize 20th-century projects of social transformation. Moving between Germany and China, the book follows the Weimarer Reichsverfassung as it was read, translated, and rewritten by Chinese actors. Rather than treating the Weimar Constitution’s influence as a simple “reception” of foreign ideas, it reconstructs how Chinese jurists used debates on labor, welfare, and economic order to rethink what a social constitution could be – and what kind of social revolution it might legitimately guide. At the core of the analysis lies a structural shift: from the Weimar Constitution’s rights-based model of social order to the policy-oriented constitutionalism that came to characterize modern China. Drawing on multilingual archives and constitutional drafts, the study traces how the Weimar Constitution’s catalog of fundamental social rights was progressively reframed as Fundamental National Policies, transforming social rights into state programs, planning targets, and ideological commitments. Organized around the triad of space, time, and tradition, the book maps the routes by which German Staatsrechtslehre and the Weimar Constitution’s concept of social rights entered Chinese debates, shows how they were positioned within changing temporal narratives of crisis and revolution, and examines how they were negotiated in the encounter with Confucian statecraft, revolutionary nationalism, and socialist planning. In doing so, it offers a new framework for understanding how constitutions mediate social revolution through the cultural translation of rights into policies. The book will interest scholars and students of constitutional law, global legal history, and modern Chinese history who seek to understand how social rights traveled across borders – and how, in the process, they quietly remade the meaning of both “constitution” and “revolution” in the 20th century. 2026-06-22T05:05:57Z 2026-06-22T05:05:57Z 2026-06-21T10:29:41Z 2025 book book ONIX_20260621T103020_9783944773544_2 2196-9752 https://www.lhlt.mpg.de/publikationen/gplh-28 https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/114305 9783944773544 9783944773552 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/177757 eng Global Perspectives on Legal History open access image/jpeg Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/114305/1/9783944773544.pdf Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory 10.12946/gplh28 10.12946/gplh28 478638b4-7e02-4f48-b41d-574a5d2192b4 9783944773544 9783944773552 192 Frankfurt am Main open access
spellingShingle GPLH
Weimar Constitution
China
20th-century
Legal history
Social transformation
Legal transfer
thema EDItEUR::L Law::LA Jurisprudence and general issues
thema EDItEUR::L Law::LA Jurisprudence and general issues::LAF Systems of law
thema EDItEUR::L Law::LA Jurisprudence and general issues::LAZ Legal history
Li, Fupeng
Translating Weimar
title Translating Weimar
title_full Translating Weimar
title_fullStr Translating Weimar
title_full_unstemmed Translating Weimar
title_short Translating Weimar
title_sort translating weimar
topic GPLH
Weimar Constitution
China
20th-century
Legal history
Social transformation
Legal transfer
thema EDItEUR::L Law::LA Jurisprudence and general issues
thema EDItEUR::L Law::LA Jurisprudence and general issues::LAF Systems of law
thema EDItEUR::L Law::LA Jurisprudence and general issues::LAZ Legal history
topic_facet GPLH
Weimar Constitution
China
20th-century
Legal history
Social transformation
Legal transfer
thema EDItEUR::L Law::LA Jurisprudence and general issues
thema EDItEUR::L Law::LA Jurisprudence and general issues::LAF Systems of law
thema EDItEUR::L Law::LA Jurisprudence and general issues::LAZ Legal history
url ONIX_20260621T103020_9783944773544_2
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