JELLINEK, GEORG

born June 16, 1851, Leipzig died Jan. 12, 1911, Heidelberg, Ger. German legal and political philosopher who, in his book Die sozialethische Bedeutung von Recht, Unrecht und Strafe (1878; 2nd ed., 1908; The Social-Ethical Significance of Right, Wrong, and Punishment), defined the law as an ethical minimumi.e., as a body of normative principles essential to civilized existence. Differing from the influential school of legal positivists, Jellinek insisted that popular approval was necessary to convert social and psychological facts into juristic norms. Jellinek, the son of the rabbinic scholar Adolf Jellinek, became a convert to Christianity. At the universities of Vienna (187989), Basel (189091), and Heidelberg (18911911), he was a capable classroom teacher as well as a distinguished scholar. Internationally, probably his best-known book is Die Erklrung der Menschen- und Brgerrechte (1895; The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens), in which he hypothesized that the French Revolutionary declaration (approved by the Constituent Assembly on Aug. 26, 1789) was derived not so much from the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as had been generally believed, but chiefly from Anglo-American political and legal historyespecially from the theories invoked to support the U.S. struggle for independence. Jellinek synthesized his views in Allgemeine Staatslehre (1900; General Theory of the State).