Seitenhistorie

Refering to a 200-year-tradition, Rechtsstaat (the law-based-state) and Rechtsstaatlichkeit (the German variant of the rule of law) are core principles of German constitutional thought. Together with the principles of democracy, of the republican, federalist and social welfare state and the indispensable guarantee of the human dignity. From a more substantive understanding, the Rechtsstaat expresses democratic concerns and the respect to individual human freedom and equality and thus the commitment to a just order, whereas from a more formal understanding it is used to describe the type of state architecture and political and social order system in which all publicly applied power is created by the law and is obliged to its regulations and underlies numerous fragmentations of power and control mechanisms („Bindung und Kontrolle"). Rechtsstaatlichkeit in this sense is a collective term for numerous (sub-)principles that allow the taming of politics by the law and shall avoid arbitrariness. Until today, the totalitarian unlawful regime established in Germany1933-45 serves as an anti-model. In comparison, the German discourse on the rule of law is strongly characterized by the self-certainty of a role model Rechtsstaat formed by the Grundgesetz. The integration of the German state into transnational Verbuende will always require an adequate approach to the law-base exercise of power.