Having recently been privy to a consequential and precedent-setting discussion on the nature of deadlines and what legal leeway there is between a late submission and being in just under the wire, we were reminded of the above legal fiction—otherwise described as a logical second—that denotes, according to the Roman system of jurisprudence that German law is heir to, a period between two simultaneous events as to make them successive with the latter in the chain being the intended effect of the former.
The most famous modern example of invoking this imaginary instance of transitional time occurred at the stroke of midnight 3 October 1990 during the Reunification of Germany (Deutsche Wiedervereinigung, see previously
here,
here,
here, and
here) which first replaced East Germany by reconstituting its constituent states (Lander—not without some derision calling them collectively
die Neulander) so that the constitutional Basic Law (
Grundgesetz) came to apply to the united federation of states in the same way for all. State elections were held there on 14 October to form parliamentary bodies and gain anatomy and self-determination within Germany.
