Engels quotes Duhring's account of the confusion that arises as a result of the contradictions and conflicts between local, provincial and national laws and takes the forms of common law, statute law and so on, where particular points override general principles and vice versa.
“But where does this confusion exist? Once again, within the area where the Prussian Landreht holds sway, where alongside, over or under this Landrecht there are provincial laws and local statutes, here and there also common law and other trash, ranging through the most diverse degrees of relative validity and eliciting from all practising jurists that cry for help which Herr Dühring here so sympathetically echoes. He need not even go outside his beloved Prussia — he need only come as far as the Rhine to convince himself that all this ceased to be an issue there for the last seventy years — not to speak of other civilised countries, where these antiquated conditions have long since been abolished.” (p 140)
Indeed, this was one of the progressive developments brought about by the bourgeois-democratic national revolutions, which needed to sweep away that confusion and establish a level playing field, within the confines of the nation state for the free development of capital. The same applies when capital enters its imperialist phase, and needs to burst asunder those same national limits that have, then, become a fetter on its further development.
Duhring goes on to talk about legal decisions being arrived at as collective decisions, but, as Engels points out, this again was a feature of the Prussian Landrecht, not of those legal systems elsewhere in Europe and North America.
“Perhaps Herr Dühring will regard it as an astonishing piece of information when we tell him that in the sphere of English law each member of a judicial bench has to give his decision separately and in open court, stating the grounds on which it is based; that administrative collective bodies which are not elected and do not transact business or vote publicly are essentially a Prussian institution and are unknown in most other countries, and that therefore his demand can only be regarded as astonishing and extremely stringent — in Prussia.” (p 141)
Engels, also, notes Duhring's anti-Semitism.
“That same philosopher of reality who has a sovereign contempt for all prejudices and superstitions is himself so deeply immersed in personal crotchets that he calls the popular prejudice against the Jews, inherited from the bigotry of the Middle Ages, a “natural judgment” based on “natural grounds”, and he rises to pyramidal heights in asserting that
“socialism is the only power which can oppose population conditions with a rather strong Jewish admixture” (conditions with a Jewish admixture! What “natural” German!)” (p 141-2)
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