Franz Kafka’s Use of Law in Fiction

Franz Kafka was a fully qualified Austrian lawyer, having earned, in 1906, a doctoral degree in Law at the German University of Prague. His field was the Civil Law as distinct from the Common Law of the United Kingdom and the United States. The study shows how Kafka used the Civil Law as a framework of reference for the fictitious legal systems he invented to suit the form of society depicted in each of the writings under discussion.