Conclusion
This concluding chapter summarizes Max Weber's theory of legal rationalization. In the beginning is the word, in the form of the charismatic revelation of the law by legal prophets. Alongside Moses, Muhammad acts as an example to illustrate this, since Islamic holy law is a ‘book religion’ which was inspired prophetically. It is decisive for the further development of the law towards rationalization that a ‘secular law’, detached from the ‘holy commandments’ and from holy law, arises to settle disputes involving ‘conflicts of interest indifferent to religion’ and also that there is a successful ‘separation between ethics and law’. If secular law has separated itself from holy law, then two relatively autonomous paths of development become apparent: towards a ‘rational and formal law which is either more logical or more empirical in nature’, as could be observed, on the one hand, in continental Europe and, on the other, in Rome and in England. Instructively, Weber distils each of these two possibilities down to two contrasting ideal-types: theoretical legal education in universities (with an entirely novel carrier stratum of legal academics) and empirical craft-like legal training by practitioners (legal honoratiores, attorneys). One strand of development leads towards a ‘system’, and the other towards casuistry.