Abstract
The aim of this paper is to establish freedom as an embracing concept of the legal state and the rule of law. At times, especially by positivist scholars on the continent and i.e. Dicey in England, ‘legal state’ and ‘rule of law’ have been interpreted as seemingly antagonistic conceptions. If a broader concept of law is applied, the opposition between the two principles can be overcome. From this philosophical point of view they can be understood as two formulations of a common goal, distinct in some results and institutional settings, but united in a core value. For this purpose I understand law as a system of norms the enactment and enforcement of which is organized by procedures, which are themselves subject to norms. Because of this structure, law addresses freedom and is at the same time an expression of freedom. As a norm, law addresses freedom by directing the choice between alternative actions; these norms open and limit areas for the enactment, adjudication and enforcement of norms and actions. Accordingly, the principle of the legal state and the rule of law base public authority on legal freedom. Both principles can thereby be intrinsically connected to democracy. Against the narrative of antagonistic principles, my article will sketch how the development of the concept of the legal state is heavily indebted to the rule of law and has only towards the end of the nineteenth century gone a separate path.
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- 1.
Brian Tamanaha On the Rule of Law. History, Politics, Theory. (2004), 7 ff. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- 2.
Differences were emphasized, for example, by Horst Dreier “ Rechtsstaat” in Enzyklopädie Philosophie. H.J. Sandkühler Ed. (2010) 2265–2272. Hamburg: Meiner.
- 3.
From the British perspective, see Gianluigi Palombella “The Rule of Law and its Core” in Gianluigi Palombella and Neil Walker Relocating the Rule of Law (2009) 17 ff. Oxford and Oregon: Hart Publishing.; from the American perspective, see Michael Rosenfeld “Rule of Law versus Rechtsstaat” in Menschenreche und Bürgerrechte in einer vielgestaltigen Welt, Peter Häberle and Jörg Paul Müller eds. (2000) 49–71. Basel, Genf, München: Helbig & Lichtenhahn; from the German perspective, see Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, “Entstehung und Wandel des Rechtsstaatsbegriffs” in Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, Recht-Staat-Freiheit. (1991) 143–169 Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp; for a closer association of the two principles cf. Neil MacCormick “Der Rechtsstaat und die Rule of Law” in Juristenzeitung (1984) pp. 65–70.
- 4.
Cf. von Hayek, who equates “Rule of Law” and “legal state”, thus we read “Rechtsstaat” in the German translation, wherever rule of law is used in the English original, Friedrich Hayek (1944): Road to Serfdom. London 1944, S. 75 f., 85 f.
- 5.
von Gneist traces the “Rechtsstaat in England” back to “Carolenean institutions” (“karolinische Grundeinrichtungen”), Rudolf von Gneist Der Rechtsstaat und die Verwaltungsgerichte in Deutschland. (1879) 37; cf. also the differentiated picture Tamanaha supra note 1 at 23 f. where he applies a very broad term of “rule of law”; for a more coarse picture see Samuel J. M. Donnelly “Reflecting on the Rule of Law: Its Reciprocal Relation with Rights, Legitimacy, and Other Concepts and Institutions” in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science No. 603 (2006), pp. 37–53, p. 42 (“The English-speaking countries of the world are renowned citadels of the rule of law”).
- 6.
Henry of Bracton II De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae. George E. Woodbine Ed. (1922) 33 Yale: Yale University Press (“quia lex facit regem … Noluit enim uti viribus, sed iudicio”).
- 7.
Ernst H. Kantorowicz, Die zwei Körper des Königs. Eine Studie zur Theologie des Königs. (1999) 164 f. u. 163. Stuttgart: Klett.
- 8.
Case of Prohibitions, 12 Co Rep 64, [1607] EWHC KB J23, 77 ER 1342, zit. nach http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/KB/1607/J23.html, last checked Dec. 15th 2013.
- 9.
Edmund Burke II The Works of Edmund Burke with a Memoir (1836) 461.
- 10.
William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 3rd ed. (1768) 233 f.
- 11.
Friedrich Murhard “Englands Verfassung” in Staats-Lexikon oder Encyclopädie der Staatswissenschaften, Hrsg. V. C.v. Rotteck u. C. Welcker, Fünfter Band, (1837), S. 84–171 at 161 (“Die Rechte und Freiheiten des Individuums nehmen in Englands Grundgesetzen den ersten Platz ein, und die Engländer sind so stolz und eifersüchtig auf ihre so lange behaupteten Rechte und Freiheiten, daß König und Parlament, ohne mit Gewißheit vorauszusehende größte Gefahren, es nicht würden wagen können, sie anzutasten”).
- 12.
For a deeper analysis of the history of the principles of the rule of law and the principle of the legal state, cf. Stephan Kirste, “Die Rule auf Law in der Deutschen Rectsstaatstheorie des 19 Jahrunderts”, in Jahrbuch fur Recht und Ethik (2013) 23 ff. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.
- 13.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Philosophy of Right. (2001), Transl. by S.W. Dyde, § 45, at 165. London: George Bell and Sons.
- 14.
Robert von Mohl Die Geschichte und Literatur der Staatswissenschaften Erster Band. (1855), quotation transl. by Stephan Kirste, 33.
- 15.
Robert von Mohl Die Geschichte und Literatur der Staatswissenschaften, Zweiter Band, (1856) 4.
- 16.
Robert von Mohl, “Story, J., Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, with a preliminary review of the Constitutional History of the Colonies and States, before the Adoption of the Constitution”. in Kritische Zeitschrift für Rechtswissenschaft und Gesetzgebung des Auslandes No. 7 (1835) 1–25, p. 17.
- 17.
Von Mohl supra note 14 At 519.
- 18.
Quoted from Horst Dippel, Die amerikanische Verfassung in Deutschland im 19. Jahrhundert. Das Dilemma von Politik und Staatsrecht. (1994) 164. Meisenheim/Glan.
- 19.
Eduard Fischel, Die Verfassung Englands. Berlin (1862) 32 ff. The German-American, Hans Lieber, has it that “englisch-amerikanische Freiheit sich vor Allem durch entschiedenes Streben, die Unabhängigkeit des Einzelnen zu kräftigen, und durch das Gefühl des Selbstvertrauens auszeichnet … die Individualität ist fast vernichtet im Absolutismus (mag er nun monarchischer oder demokratischer Art sein), während höchste Freiheit (nach englisch-amerikanischer Anschauung) die Individualität eines Jeden ans Licht und die besondere Thätigkeit von Jedem, nach seinem Gutdünken, in die freiest Bewegung bringt. Unabhängigkeit auf der höchsten, mit Wohlfahrt und breiter volksthümlicher Sicherung der Freiheit verträglichen Stufe ist das grosse Ziel englisch-amerikanischer Freiheit, und Selbstvertrauen ist die Hauptquelle, woher sie ihre Kraft schöpft”, Hans Lieber “Beilage, Englische und Französische Freiheit” in Mittermaier, Carl Joseph Anton Die englische Staatsverfassung in ihrer Entwicklung nach der neuesten Schrift von E. S. Creasy (1849) 23–40, at 29.
- 20.
Paul Kahn, The Cultural Study of Law: Reconstructing Legal Scholarship (1999) 15 f. Chicago and London: Chicago University Press. (“The rule of law is not just the sum total of the statutory and regulatory output at any given moment; it is also understood as a process of evaluating and creating new laws that corrects the deficiencies of what came before … The state of law … stand opposed simultaneously to the divine and to the merely natural. The perfect image of this set of ideas may be that of the signing of the Mayflower Compact, which we imagine stripped of its theocratic context. On one side of the Atlantic appeared the false claim to a politics of divine will; on the other side appeared nature as wilderness without political order or history. History begins with a communal act of will, imposing a reasonable order on self and polity. This is the beginning of law’s rule”).
- 21.
“Die durch den Zwischenbau [der Selbstverwaltung, SK] geschaffenen Garantien des ‘Rechtsstaats’ sind aber wesentlich vollständig; es fehlt darin kaum ein Glied, welches zum Schutz des individuellen Rechtskreises im Staat erforderlich scheint. Es liegt darin vor Allem die Realität der sogenannten Grundrechte …”, von Gneist supra note 5 at 60 and at 37 “aus England … im Gegentheil nur die Wahrheit zu entnehmen, dass die politische Freiheit nicht anders als in ununterbrochener Anknüpfung an das überkommene Recht des Landes zu gewinnen ist, und dass die erstrebte Freiheit. nach englischem Vorbild nur dadurch entstehen kann, wenn jedes Volk seine Verwaltungsorgane in gleichem Sinne der Stetigkeit mit der heutigen Ordnung der Gesellschaft verbindet”.
- 22.
Lieber, supra note 19. At 31.
- 23.
Dreier supra note 2. At 2265 and 2267.
- 24.
Id.
- 25.
Georg Jellinek, Gesetz und Verordnung. Staatsrechtliche Untersuchungen (1887) 3 (“Mit dem Worte ‘law’ wird ununterschiedlich Alles bezeichnet, was aus den verschiedensten Rechtsquellen kommend den mannigfaltigsten Inhalt haben kann”).
- 26.
And for this particular conception, Palombella supra note 4 at 20, is indeed correct, claiming that “law is not the constraint but rather the ‘form’ of the state’s will”.
- 27.
Georg Jellinek, Ein Verfassungsgerichtshof für Österreich (1885) 55 f. He draws the conclusion from this, at 60 “Ein Bundesstaat ohne Verfassungsgericht ist kein Rechtsstaat im vollen Sinne”, see also Georg Jellinek, Verfassungsänderung und Verfassungswandlung (1906) 16 f.; for further problematization of a Constitutional Court: Georg Jellinek Allgemeine Staatslehre (3rd ed. 1959) 615.
- 28.
Böckenförde supra note 4 at 143 ff.; Palombella supra note 4 at 17 f.
- 29.
For the following cf. Stephan Kirste Einführung in die Rechtsphilosophie (2010). Darmstadt, 87 ff.; Stephan Kirste “The Human Right to Democracy as the Capstone of Law” in: Human Rights, Democracy, Rule of Law and Contemporary Social Challenges in Complex Societies. Hrsg. v. B. A. Rocha, K. Salgado, M. C. Galuppo, M. Sette Lopes, Th. B. Silva dos Santos u. a. Belo Horizonte (2013), S. 103–120, IV.
- 30.
Palombella, supra note 4 at 21, 24.
- 31.
Dietrich Murswiek, “Souveränität und humanitäre Intervention” in: Der Staat No. 35 (1996) 31–44.
- 32.
Hannah Arendt. On Revolution (1990) 130. München: Pieper. (“Tyranny, as the revolutions came to understand it, was a form of government in which the ruler, even though he ruled according to the laws of the realm, had monopolized for himself the right of action, banished the citizens from the public realm into the privacy of their households, and demanded of them that they mind their own, private business. Tyranny, in other words, deprived of public happiness, though not necessarily of private well-being, while a republic granted to every citizen the right to become ‘a participator in the government of affairs’, the right to be seen in action”).
- 33.
Böckenförde, supra note 4 at 42.
- 34.
Stephan Kirste “§ 204. Die naturrechtliche Idee überstaatlicher Menschenrechte” in Handbuch des Staatsrechts, Vol. 10 P. Kirchhof und J. Isensee Eds. (2012) 1–30 and marginal note 1. Heidelberg: C.F. Müller; Robert Alexy A Theory of Constitutional Rights. (1996) (original: Theorie der Grundrechte. Frankfurt/Main. 1996), 120 ff.
- 35.
Cf. Art. 6 UDHR: “Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.”
- 36.
Winfried Brugger “Georg Jellineks Statuslehre: national und international. Eine Würdigung und Aktualisierung anlässlich seines 100. Todestages im Jahr 2011” in Archiv des öffentlichen Rechts No. 136 (2011) pp. 1–43, at 1 ff.
- 37.
Böckenförde, supra note 4 at 42. (Human rights declarations “sind zumeist aus dem Streben nach Befreiung von staatlicher Übermacht und die Freiheit mißachtendem Recht entstanden. Doch schon an ihnen zeigt sich, daß zwischen Freiheit und Recht ein notwendiger und begrifflicher Zusammenhang besteht: Freiheit muß, damit sie Bestand und Sicherung erhält, als Recht formuliert und anerkannt werden”).
- 38.
With respect to the concept of human rights, they are indivisible. See, Robert Alexy “Die Institutionalisierung der Menschenrechte im demokratischen Verfassungsstaat” in Philosophie der Menschenrechte, Stefan Gosepath, Georg Lohmann Eds. (1998) 244–264, p. 261 Frankfurt: Suhrkamp; nineteenth century constitutionalism has shown, however, that the realization of the two aspects of autonomy can fall apart.
- 39.
For the concept of paternalism as benevolent action towards another without his will, cf. Stephan Kirste “Harter und Weicher Rechtspaternalismus unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Medizinethik” in Juristenzeitung (2011) 805 ff.
- 40.
Georg Jellinek Die Entstehung der modernen Staatsidee. In: Schriften und Reden, Vol. 2. (1911) 45–63, 53 f. (“Frei ist derjenige, der niemand unterworfen ist als sich selbst; das ist die zweite weltgeschichtliche Nuance der Freiheitsidee in der neueren Geschichte. Neben den liberalen tritt der demokratische Freiheitsgedanke”).
- 41.
Heiner Bielefeldt, Philosophie der Menschenrechte. Grundlage eines weltweiten Freiheitsethos (1998) 107 f. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
- 42.
To make it clear: A limited government may obey the rule of law without being democratic (see Brian Tamanaha “A Concise Guide to the Rule of Law” in Gianluigi Palombella and Neil Walker Relocating the Rule of Law. (2009) pp. 3 ff., 13. Oxford and Oregon: Hart Publishing). However, it does not realize its potentials with respect to freedom then.
- 43.
At the international level cf. 67/1 Declaration of the High-level Meeting of the General Assembly on the Rule of Law at the National and International Levels, I, 5 (“We reaffirm that human rights, the rule of law and democracy are interlinked and mutually reinforcing and that they belong to the universal and indivisible core values and principles of the United Nations”).
- 44.
Aristotle already knew that, although he considered democracy to be unrealistic for his time: “… a fundamental principle of the democratic form of constitution is liberty – that is what is usually asserted, implying that only under this constitution men participate liberty, for they assert this as the aim of every democracy … And one is for a man to live as he likes; for they say that this is the function of liberty, inasmuch as to live not as one likes is the life of a man that is a slave. This is the second principle of democracy” (Aristotle Politics Engl. Transl. by H. Rackham (1967) VI, 2, 1317a 40-b 17, at 489–491).
- 45.
This is all a metaphysical concept (in this sense see Palombella supra note 4, at 19), but a mere legal construction; although the concept of the legal person had metaphysical roots in the concept of “persona moralis” (see Pufendorf and others), it is decisive that these metaphysical roots were decidedly cut off by scholars like Friedrich Carl von Savigny; cf. Stephan Kirste, “Dezentrierung, Überforderung und dialektische Konstruktion der Rechtsperson” in Verfassung – Philosophie – Kirche (Festschrift für Alexander Hollerbach zum 70). Geburtstag. Hrsg. v. J. Bohnert, Chr. Gramm, U. Kindhäuser, J. Lege, A. Rinken u. G. Robbers (2001) 319–361, at 335 ff. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.
- 46.
Kantorowicz supra note 7.
- 47.
Cf. supra note 6.
- 48.
This does not preclude that in a moral sense, in England “the law of the constitution, the rules which in foreign countries naturally form part of a constitutional code, are not the source but the consequence of the rights of individuals, as defined and enforced by the Courts”, Albert Venn Dicey Introduction into the Study of the Constitution (1915) 120.
- 49.
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, The Federalist, G. W. Carey, Ed. (2001), § 49, at 261. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund; Dieter Grimm “§ 1. Ursprung und Wandel der Verfassung” in Handbuch des Staatsrechts der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, J. Isensee, P. Kirchhof Eds. 2–45 and marginal note 28. (The idea of a constituent power does not preclude limitations by other (moral, natural) norms or rights, but only by the former or future constitution).
- 50.
In the constitutional state the state does not, legally speaking, exist “before” or outside the law, but is founded on the law and receives its legal identity from it.
- 51.
Insofar the German tradition speaks of the “principle of the legal state in a formal sense”, this understanding comes close to Tamanaha’s concept of “the rule of law in a thin sense”, see Tamanaha, supra note 42.
- 52.
Raz calls this “the basic intuition from which the doctrine of the rule of law derives”, Joseph Raz (1979): The Rule of Law and Its Virtues. In: The Authority of Law: Essays on Law and Morality. Oxford 1979, p. 214. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- 53.
See Dicey supra note 48. At 120 (“man may with us be punished for a breach of law, but he can be punished for nothing else”). This is pretty much the content of the old rule: “nulla poena sine lege praevia”.
- 54.
David Beatty, “Law’s Golden Rule” in Gianluigi Palombella, and Neil Walker Relocating the Rule of Law (2009) 99–116. Oxford and Oregon: Hart Publishing.
- 55.
Due to the concept that the legal person can only act legally “outside” itself, the German doctrine of public law, presupposed a merely factual relationship of civil servants, pupils in public schools, soldiers or inmates. As far as this special relationship was concerned they were supposed to have either no or only limited protection by constitutional rights; Dicey correctly criticized this an the French concept of “administrative law” of his time as being incompatible with the rule of law, Dicey supra note 48. At 120.
- 56.
Gernot Sydow Parlamentssouveräntität und Rule of Law (2005) 10 f. Tübingen: Mohr.
- 57.
Some authors distinguish this “thick concept of the rule of law” (Tamanaha supra note 42 at 4) or “materieller Rechtsstaat” (“legal state in a material sense”) from the formal principle.
- 58.
Dreier supra note 2. At 2268.
- 59.
After the Re-Unification of Germany, one of the East German civil rights activists, Bärbel Boley, claimed: “Wir wollten Gerechtigkeit und bekamen den Rechtsstaat” (“We wanted to achieve justice, but received the legal state instead”), quoted by Ingo von Münch “Rechtsstaat versus Gerechtigkeit” in Der Staat No. 33 (1994) 165–184. At 165.
- 60.
Kirste supra note 29. At 125, 132 ff.
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Kirste, S. (2014). Philosophical Foundations of the Principle of the Legal State (Rechtsstaat) and the Rule of Law. In: Silkenat, J., Hickey Jr., J., Barenboim, P. (eds) The Legal Doctrines of the Rule of Law and the Legal State (Rechtsstaat). Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice, vol 38. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05585-5_3
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