Were jurists in the GDR more susceptible to ideology than representatives of other professions? Did legal scholars serve an unjust state? How did the SED interact with law professors, and how obediently did they follow party resolutions? The American legal historian Inga Markovits uses the Faculty of Law at Humboldt University in Berlin as a laboratory to describe how jurists navigated the tension between power and law in the GDR. She recounts the 40-year history of the faculty from three different perspectives: as adaptation and submission to the SED, as sullen evasion and subversion of party resolutions, and as a weariness of political faith in socialism or at least in the party. Markovits concludes: The GDR was never a rule of law in the technical sense of the word, but it was also not an unjust state; rather, it gradually moved from being a non-rule of law state towards becoming a rule of law state over the decades.