The goal of the reformers whose efforts culminated in the Imperial Justice Laws had been to create a unified, self-administered, and self-disciplined national bar that could fulfill its ascribed role as the “Archimedean point” for the reform of German society and polity, one that could serve as the general estate. The Imperial Justice Laws in many ways represented the great victory of liberal reform doctrine. In the years after 1879, the growth, maturation, and increasing institutional and professional sophistication of the private legal profession, as evidenced both by national trends and in Hannover, seemed to justify the high hopes of the nineteenth-century liberal reformers. The path was indeed opened to talent; social mobility and diversity increased at the same time that the public status and professional competency of the private bar rose.

But the liberal machine set in motion in 1877–9 reached the limits of its adaptability and its power to accomplish the goals of the reformers in the early years of the twentieth century. From three perspectives, liberal ideas of deference and proceduralism proved too limited to adapt to the changing circumstances of German society and economy. This chapter addresses the first of the three limits of liberalism, the limits of Honoratiorenpolitik and the deference upon which it was based as it played out in the conflict within the legal profession over simultaneous admission of district court practitioners to practice before superior courts.