Administrative penalties in the Rechtsstaat: On the emergence of the Ordnungswidrigkeit sanctioning system in post-war Germany

The tendency to resort to administrative penalties in the wake of the expansion of the regulatory state has generally been ascribed to the need to lessen judicial workload and streamline procedures so as to induce compliance through speedy enforcement. This article, however, articulates the historical singularity of the German experience with administrative penalties in the decades following World War II. Specifically, it draws attention to the manifold links between the major statutory developments through which the Ordnungswidrigkeit sanctioning system took shape and the larger economic, political, and social changes whereby the Federal Republic of Germany acted to break with its Nazi past and secure its foundations as a sovereign, democratic Rechtsstaat.