Franz Leopold Neumann (23.05.1900, Katowice - 1954, Visp in Switzerland) was born in a Jewish family in Katowice. He started studing law in Berlin, where he supported the German Revolution of 1918. He was a member of Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) since 1919. He received a Ph.D in law in 1923 and then he started working at the university. He was a left-wing liberal activist and a defence counsel of labour union. From 1925 to 1927, he worked as a lawyer and an assistant of Hugo Sinzheimer, who was a leading reformist theoretician of labour law. Sinzheimer hired Leopold as a teacher in union academy at the univeristy in Francfurt.From 1928 to 1933, he worked in Berlin as a specialist of labour law and represented labour unions in law suits. Between 1932 and 1933 he stood as a proxy for SPD, but his activity was stopped by the Nazis who came to power.

In 1933 he had been warned that he was going to be arrested. Thank to that fact he managed to emigrate to the Great Britain, where he went to London School of Economics. He received there the second docotorate on  the research on history of development and decline of the rule of law. He worked there as a lecturer for some time and in 1936 he became a legal adviser and a science partner of Institute of Social Research in Frankfurt, which functioned in exile in Geneva and Paris. He participated in debates on national socialism organised by the Institute in New York. He worked with American Jewish Comittee. Since 1942, he was an expert for German issues in government institutions in the USA. Since 1950 he was a professor of Columbia University. He is known from theoretic analysis on national socialism. He died in a car accident. [[refr:"nazwa"|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Leopold_Neumann [stan na 10 I 2009 r.].]].

The most important works:

•  Die politische und soziale Bedeutung der arbeitsgerichtlichen Rechtsprechung, Berlin: Laub, 1929;
•  Tarifrecht auf der Grundlage der Rechtsprechung des Rechsarbeitsgerichts, Berlin: Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund, 1931;
•  Koalitionsfreiheit und Reichsverfassung. Die Stellung der Gewerkschaften im Verfassungssystem, Berlin: Heymann, 1932;
•  Trade Unionism, Democracy, Dictatorship, preface by Harold J. Laski, London: Workers' Educational Trade Union Committee, 1934. (In USA published as: European Trade Unionism and Politics, ed. Carl Raushenbuch, New York: League for Industrial Democracy, 1936);
•  (under a psuedonym: Leopold Franz) Die Gewerkschaften in der Demokratie und in der Diktatur. Probleme des Sozialismus, 13, Karlsbad: Graphia, 1935;
•  Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism, London: Gollancz, 1942;
•  Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism, 1933-1944, 2. improved edition with a new supplement, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1944;
•  The Democratic and the Authoritarian State: Essays in Political and Legal Theory, ed. Herbert Marcuse, Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1957;
• Wirtschaft, Staat, Demokratie. Aufsätze 1930-1954, ed. Alfons Söllner, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1978;
•  Die Herrschaft des Gesetzes. Eine Untersuchung zum Verhältnis von politischer Theorie und Rechtssystem in der Konkurenzgesellschaft, translaton and ed. Alfons Söllner, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. (The German translation of a docotoral dissertation dated on 1936. The Governance of the Rule of Law: an Investigation into the Relationship between the Political Theories, the Legal System, and the Social Background in the Competitive Society, London School of Economics, 1936 (examiner: Harold J. Laski), 1980;
•  The Rule of Law: Political Theory and the Legal System in Modern Society, ed. Matthias Ruete, Leamington Spa: Berg, 1986.
•  Charles Wright Mills:"Neumann and Behemoth the best of German Tradition", in Power, Politics and People,New York,1967.