With the increasing flood of legislation, the number of retroactive formal laws and the number of rulings by the Federal Constitutional Court regarding the permissibility of retroactive legislation have risen sharply in recent decades. However, this retroactive jurisprudence faces diverse criticism in scholarly literature. Based on the findings of excessive legislative hypertrophy, its causes and implications for freedom, as well as a critical assessment of the rulings of the Federal Constitutional Court, this work attempts to outline guidelines for balancing the retroactive amendment interests of the legislator on one hand and the individual interest in legal certainty on the other, by developing fundamental types of graduated protection of trust positions for citizens derived from the retroactive rulings of the Federal Constitutional Court.