Calibration and synchronisation of law byZeitgeist

Many tempi run through the orchestration of law, most of them measurable and some not. Zeitgeist (spirit of the time) is one such unmeasurable reference to oralities of law that is quintessentially German. A crossroads notion located at intersections of culture, history, aesthetics and normative structures of society, Zeitgeist escapes translation. Even so, references to Zeitgeist have served in the application of law, and in legal discourses, as an extra-judicial reference order – but not just to bring legal rules and customs on par with mainstream social, cultural and aesthetic transformations. This impact relationship is double-edged in that the orientative force of Zeitgeist moves law as much as law has the power to move the inexorable Zeitgeist. Zeitgeist can be instrumentalised by law to fulfil its two most important functions: calibration, or the conservative impetus to preserve the status quo, and synchronisation, the progressive impetus to contemporise.