Some authors[weasel words] regard his 1946 essay Gesetzliches Unrecht und übergesetzliches Recht ("Statutory Lawlessness and Supra-Statutory Law"), which first included his theory, as one of the most influential German legal-philosophical writings of the 20th century.
Before the Second World War, Radbruch seems to have been a supporter of unconditional legal positivism, which demands a strict separation between law and morality.
His experience under Nazi rule (Radbruch, then a professor, was banned from teaching) seems to have modified his view.
The courts used Radbruch's formula to argue that some statutes were so intolerable that they had not been law in the first place and consequently could not be used to justify the acts in question.
[6] More recently, the Radbruch formula reappeared in trials against border guards in the former East Germany who had shot people attempting to escape to the West under the policy of Schießbefehl.