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h1. _Rechtsstaat_ and _Rechtsstaatlichkeit_ in Germany |
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Refering to a {panel} _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_ Germany{_}1933-45 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 transnationalVerbuende networks will always require an adequate approach to the law-base exercise of power. ._ {panel} h2. I. The principle of Rechtsstaatlichkeit under the Grundgesetz |
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Originally, the _Grundgesetz_ related to the _Rechtsstaat_ only in Art. 28 GG where it regulated that the constitutional order within the _Bundesländer_ have to conform to the principles of the republican, democratic and social _Rechtsstaat_. A similar homogeneity rule points to the international level. The 1992 included Art. 23 Abs. 1 S. 1 GG regulates that, in order to support the realization of a European Union, the Federal Republic of Germany participates in the development of the European Union that is verpflichtet to democratic, rule of law, sozial and federal principles and the principle of subsidiarity and provides Human Rights protection equal to this _Grundgesetz_." Since 2000, Art. 16 II 2 of the _Grundgesetz_ further allows, on the basis of a law, the extradition of a German citizen to a member state of the European Union or to an |
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The Grundgesetz expresses rule of law principles in the rules on the state architecture and the structures of constitutional bodies and the Human Rights guarantees that comprise requirements for the organisation and procedure of the state. Art. 20 GG names several rule of law principles, but the rule of law principle (vgl. BVerfG E 30, 1, 24f.): in par. 2 the principle of the separation of powers and in par. 3 the principle of the obligation of the legislation to the constitutional order, and of the executive and the judiciary to the law and justice ("Gesetz und Recht"). The predominance of the constitution and the law are based here upon and shape the legal order by the vertical hierarchy of norms. Rechtsstaatlichkeit in the German understanding also encompasses the unlawfulness of retroactive liabilities, the principle of proportionality, to dissolve conflicts between legal certainty and justice individually in hardship cases, and the principle of complete and effective judicial review in cases with relevance to individual freedom and property rights (Art. 19 IV GG; see BVerfG 1968: 21 (E 30, 1, 21)). As a constitutional principle Rechtsstaatlichkeit compasses a multiplicity of principles that are shaped by the Grundgesetz. Katharina Sobota (1997) counts 142 (!). Further particular normative meanings of the principle of the rule of law are not generally approved.
In order to rationalise political rule, Rechtsstaatlichkeit in the German sense shall frame and shape, bind and limitate the state by law (Schulze-Fielitz 2006: Rn. 38). Impressed by Immanuel Kant and Wilhelm von Humboldts, in the beginning of the 19. century scholars formulated a rule of law program inspired by reason that should institutionalise liberal claims against the absolutist-monarchical state-conception („gute policey") (see Martini 2009: 308). From a legal practice perspective, Rechtsstaatlichkeit could be narrowed to the principle of regulation by formal law (Gesetzesvorbehalt) for state action relevant for indiviual freedom and property rights, the principle of the law-based administration (Gesetzmäßigkeit der Verwaltung) and a specific administrative judiciary. All three of them formal requirements which put emphasis to a more formal understanding of the Rechtsstaatlichkeit. Finally, the judicial positivism around 1900 made for the exclusion of substantive and therefore politically contested criteria form the concept of Rechtsstaatlichkeit (see Martini 2009 ibid.). In radical continuation of this understanding, in 1928 Hans Kelsen in his "Reine Rechtslehre" ("Pure Jurisprudence") affirmed the identity of the state and the law. Now, the state was nothing more than "Rechtsstaat", the legal state.
On the baseis of the Grundgesetz, in Federal Republican Germany a material understanding of Rechtsstaatlichkeit emerged. It was opposed to the formal legal positivism in the time of the Weimar republic and to the material evolvement of the law during the 3. Reich (Böckenförde 1992: Sp. 332 ff., 338f.?). The substantive core of the understanding according to the Grundgesetz is the connecting to a culture of universally valid human rights, complemented by a historically grown Understanding of social justice. This Rechtsstaat is to be undertood as an integral anti-model to the social and political self-concept of National-socialism. Especially with the legal dogmatics on the principle of proportionality actions taken by the legislation and the administration become verifiable as regard to substance at the measure of human rights.
II. Obligation to the law and judicial control
The German understanding of the rule of law is based on a strict etatist concept of the law. Generation of the law by state-bodies and the legal order conceptualised as a vertical hierarchy of norms. All relevant regulation has to be pre-formulated by legislation. Separation of competences between the federal parliament and the provincial legislative bodies. Non-legislative rules and regulations − like by-laws and decrees − have to be explicitly permitted by statute and have to fit into the legal order. Other social laws like religious or expert laws and technical standards may exist besides statute as long as there are no collisions. Ensured e.g. by the freedom of religion (Art. 4 GG) or within the private autonomy guarantee. As a standard of legality they can only be drawn on as far as they are approved by the statutory legal order and jurisdiction.
The principles of the supremacy of statutory law and the pre-formulation of state-actions by legislation ("Vorrang und Vorbehalt des Gesetzes") are both expressions of of a comprehensive concept of obligation to the law and control. Executive actions, therefore, are strictly bound to the law, i. e. an explicit statutory competence is required whenever individual human rights are affected by a state act. This competence not only approves the act, but at the same time restricts it to the legally approved. The more intense the affection to human rights is, the more specifically the competence has to be formulated by legislation in order to provide the encroachment with the necessary democratic legitimacy and - from a rule of law point of view - proportionality. E. g. in cases of privacy relevant security measures (see Bundesverfassungsgericht ...).
For the German understanding of Rechtsstaatlichkeita high judicial gerichtliche Kontrolldichte is specific. Kontrolle der öffentlichen Gewalt by an independant judiciary, gewährleistet durch die Unabhängigkeit des einzelnen Richters (Art. 97 GG), verschiedene Rechtswege und Instanzenzüge zur gerichtlichen Selbstkontrolle. Prozessrecht als selbständige Rechtsmaterie. Grundrechtliche Absicherung des effektiven Rechtsschutzes bei öff. Gewalt in Art. 19 IVGG und Prozessgrundrechte in Art. 101 ff. GG. Allerdings erfordert die im Rahmen von 19 IV und dem Justizgewährleistungsanspruchs geforderte Rechtskontrolle nicht zwingend die gerichtliche Kontrolle, wie die anerkannte Ausnahme bei der Kontrolle von Geheimdiensthandeln zeigt, wo eine parlamentarische Kontrolle die gerichtliche ersetzt (BVerfgE 30, 1, 21 ff.). Und im Rahmen der privatautonomen Bestimmung von Rechtsschutz- und Schiedsstellen.
Die Kontrolle des Gesetzgebers erfolgt durch die Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit. Die Bindung an die Verfassung (Art. 20 Abs. 3 GG) und vor allem an die Grundrechte wird vom Bundesverfassungsgerichts (Art. 92 ff. GG) kontrolliert. Nicht zuletzt das Institut der Verfassungsbeschwerde (Art. 93 Abs. 1 Nr. 4a GG) verleiht dieser Kontrolle Dynamik, seine Gesetzesverwerfungskompetenz (§ 31 BVerfGG) verleiht ihr Durchsetzungskraft. Die Durchsetzung des umfassenden Verfassungsvorrangs ist als „Konstitutionalisierung der Rechtsordnung" rekonstruiert worden (Schuppert/ Bumke 2000). Die Verfassungsbindung des Parlaments und die starke Stellung des Bundesverfassungsgerichts sind keinesfalls unumstritten, führen sie doch letztlich zu einem Übergewicht des Rechtsstaats gegenüber der Demokratie. Das Rechtsstaatsprinzip beschränkt den Handlungsspielraum des Staates und auch des Parlaments (Martini 2009: ...).
III. Rechtsstaatlichkeit and the democratic principle
Das demokratische Prinzip ist gleich in mehrfacher Hinsicht rechtsstaatlich diszipliniert: 1) Die sich aus dem Demokratieprinzip ergebenden Anforderungen (Art. 20 II GG) werden über einen formalen Begriff demokratischer Legitimation verfassungsrechtlich gewendet und so zu einem Thema der Rule of law. 2) Über die Grundrechtsgarantien des GG werden individuelle Freiheiten zu Rechtspositionen mit Verfassungsrang und gerichtlich durchsetzbar und damit zur Frage der nicht auf demokratischem Wege hintergehbaren Recht- und Verfassungsmäßigkeit (insbes. Verhältnismäßigkeit), 3) Aufgrund seiner im internationalen Vergleich weitreichenden Kompetenzen (Brodocz 2003: 255f.) kann das Bundesverfassungsgericht gesellschaftlichen Auseinandersetzungen nicht selten den verfassungsrechtlichen Schlusspunkt hinzufügen und die demokratische Debatten ex cathedra beenden und die politischen Lagern dabei gleichwohl integrieren. 4) Wehrhafte oder streitbare Demokratie im Sinne von staatlichen Instrumenten zur Unterbrechung des Diskurses und zum Erhalt der freiheitlichen demokratischen Grundordnung (Art. 79 Abs. 3 GG, 33 V, 9 II, 21 II, 18 GG.).
IV. Formal or substantive conceptions of Rechtsstaatlichkeit?
Offen ist die Frage, inwieweit das deutsche Verständnis der Rule of Law über die formalen Anforderungen einer rechtlichen Bindung und der Rechtskontrolle hinaus noch weitere materielle Elemente umfasst, i.e. thicker or thinner conception of the rule of law. Die Beantwortung dieser Frage hängt mit der Verwendung des Begriffs im Zusammenspiel mit anderen Strukturprinzipien der Verfassungsstaatlichkeit zusammen, insbesondere der Garantie der menschenrechte und dem Demokratieprinzip. Reduziert man diese Prinzipien alle auf ihren Bedeutungskern, um Überschneidungen zu vermeiden, dann zählt zur formellen Seite des Rechtsstaats zählen die Rechtstechnik staatlichen Handelns (das Wie) - also Gesetzmäßigkeit, Staatsstrukturanforderungen, Rechtsschutzressourcen und Staatshaftung, während die das staatliche Handeln anleitenden Rechtsinhalte (das Was) anderweitig verortet sind (Schmidt-Aßmann, Rn 18f.; Martini 2009: ...). Verwendet man den Rechtsstaatsbegriff dagegen gehaltvoller, ohne Form und Inhalt voneinander zu trennen, dann ist über den Ausgleich gegenläufiger Freiheitsinteressen hinaus auch die Gewährleistung der Verhältnisse und der Wertordnung von ihm umfasst, die die Voraussetzungen für die Verwirklichung des Rechts und insbesondere die Inanspruchnahme der Grundrechte sind (vgl. Kunig 2001: 434). Allerdings ist der normative Gehalt des Rechtsstaatsprinzips als Verfassungsprinzip, wie es als Maßstab der Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit dient, auf die ausdrücklichen Gehalte des Grundgesetzes reduziert. Einerseits wird die Frage nach den Inhalten dadurch zu einer verfassungspolitischen, andererseits gehen dadurch auch bei einem formellen Verständnis des Rechtsstaatsprinzips keine Inhalte verloren, soweit die anderweitig in der Verfassung oder in der einfachen Rechtsordnung verbrieft sind. Aus diesem Grunde ist parallel zur Ausdifferenzierung der Wertordnung des Grundgesetzes durch die Gerichte in der einfachen Rechtsordnung von einer Reformalisierung des Rechtsstaatsbegriffs gesprochen worden, weil dieser zunehmend wieder auf die Anerkennung der Positivität des gesetzten Rechts beschränkt worden ist (Grimm 1980: 704.).
V. Preconditions of Rechtsstaatlichkeit
Terminologically, the principle of Rechtsstaatlichkeit, according to the German Grundgesetz, can be differed from human rights guarantee and from the democratic principle. However, the parallel historical development of these conceptions will always determine each others meanings, and they can only unfold completely embedded in a context that encompasses the whole canon. Even if the liberal and secular state may feed upon preconditions that it could not guarantee by itself, as Böckenförde (1969) pointed out, it may intend to preserve its moral and political grounds by adequate institutional and legal structures. In order to preserve the social preconditions of Rechtsstaatlichkeit, the Grundgesetz not only contains the principle of the social welfare state as a binding constitutional objective, but it also allows public school supervision (Art. 7 GG), it ensures free information by broadcast and press (Art. 5 I) , and it protects religiously guided conveying of values and meaning in an individual and a collective dimension (Art. 4 GG). Rechtsstaatlichkeit in the sense of a German understanding of the rule of law will always be bound to the context of the democratic and social constitutional state.
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Bibliography Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde (1969): Entstehung und Wandel des Rechtsstaatsbegriffs, in: Recht, Staat, Freiheit, 1991, 143 -.... Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde (1992): Rechtsstaat, in: Ritter/Gründer (Ed.), Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Vol. 8, 332-.... Dieter Grimm (1980): Reformalisierung des Rechtsstaates als Demokratiepostulat?, JuS 1980, 704-... Rainer Grote (2004): Rule of Law, Rechtsstaat and „Etat de droit", in: Christian Starck (Ed.), Constitutionalism, Universalism and Democracy: A Comparative Analysis, 269-306 Philipp Kunig (2001): Der Rechtsstaat, in: ... (Ed.), Festschrift 50 Jahre Bundesverfassungsgericht, 421-... Stefan Martini (2009): Die Pluralität von Rule-of-Law-Konzeptionen in Europa und das Prinzip einer europäischen Rule of Law, in: Matthias Kötter/ Gunnar Folke Schuppert, Normative Pluralität ordnen: Rechtspluralismus, Kollisionsnormen und Rule of Law dies- und jenseits des Staates, 303-344 Neil D. MacCormick (1984): Der Rechtsstaat und die Rule of Law, Juristenzeitung ..., 65- Eberhard Schmidt-Aßmann (...): § 26 Rechtsstaat, in: Josef Isensee/ Paul Kirchhof (Ed.): Handbuch des Staatsrechts der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Vol. ..., ...-... Helmuth Schulze-Fielitz (2006): Art. 20 (Rechtsstaat), in: Horst Dreier (Ed.), Grundgesetz. Kommentar, 2. ed. 2006 Gunnar Folke Schuppert/ Christian Bumke (2000): Die Konstitutionalisierung der Rechtsordnung Katharina Sobota (1997): Das Prinzip Rechtsstaat Michael Stolleis, Rechtsstaat, in: Adalbert Erler/ Ekkehard Kaufmann (Ed.), Handwörterbuch der Rechtsgeschichte, Bd. IV, 1990, Sp. 367 ff. international Court as long as the principles of the rule of law are preserved.
The _Grundgesetz_ expresses rule of law principles in the rules on the state architecture and the structures of constitutional bodies and the Human Rights guarantees that comprise requirements for the organisation and procedure of the state. Art. 20 GG names several rule of law principles, but _the_ rule of law principle (vgl. BVerfG E 30, 1, 24f.): in par. 2 the principle of the separation of powers and in par. 3 the principle of the obligation of the legislation to the constitutional order, and of the executive and the judiciary to the law and justice ("_Gesetz und Recht_"). The predominance of the constitution and the law are based here upon and shape the legal order by the vertical hierarchy of norms. _Rechtsstaatlichkeit_ in the German understanding also encompasses the unlawfulness of retroactive liabilities, the principle of proportionality, to dissolve conflicts between legal certainty and justice individually in hardship cases, and the principle of complete and effective judicial review in cases with relevance to individual freedom and property rights (Art. 19 IV GG; see BVerfG 1968: 21 (E 30, 1, 21)). As a constitutional principle Rechtsstaatlichkeit compasses a multiplicity of principles that are shaped by the Grundgesetz. _Katharina Sobota_ (1997) counts 142 (\!). Further particular normative meanings of the principle of the rule of law are not generally approved.
In order to rationalise political rule, _Rechtsstaatlichkeit_ in the German sense shall frame and shape, bind and limitate the state by law (Schulze-Fielitz 2006: Rn. 38). Impressed by _Immanuel Kant_ and _Wilhelm von Humboldts_, in the beginning of the 19. century scholars formulated a rule of law program inspired by reason that should institutionalise liberal claims against the absolutist-monarchical state-conception („_gute policey_") (see Martini 2009: 308). From a legal practice perspective, Rechtsstaatlichkeit could be narrowed to the principle of regulation by formal law (_Gesetzesvorbehalt_) for state action relevant for indiviual freedom and property rights, the principle of the law-based administration (_Gesetzmäßigkeit der Verwaltung_) and a specific administrative judiciary. All three of them formal requirements which put emphasis to a more formal understanding of the _Rechtsstaatlichkeit_. Finally, the judicial positivism around 1900 made for the exclusion of substantive and therefore politically contested criteria form the concept of _Rechtsstaatlichkeit_ (see Martini 2009 ibid.). In radical continuation of this understanding, in 1928 Hans Kelsen in his "Pure Theory of Law" ("_Reine Rechtslehre_") affirmed the identity of the state and the law. Now, the state was nothing more than "Rechtsstaat", the legal state.
On the base of the _Grundgesetz_, in Federal Republican Germany a material understanding of Rechtsstaatlichkeit emerged. It was opposed to the formal legal positivism in the time of the Weimar republic and to the material evolvement of the law during the 3. Reich (Böckenförde 1992: 332-339). The substantive core of the understanding according to the Grundgesetz is the connecting to a culture of universally valid human rights, complemented by a historically grown Understanding of social justice. This Rechtsstaat is to be undertood as an integral anti-model to the social and political self-concept of National-socialism. Especially with the legal dogmatics on the principle of proportionality actions taken by the legislation and the administration become verifiable as regard to substance at the measure of human rights.
h2. II. Obligation to the law and judicial control
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The German understanding of the rule of law is abased on a strict etatist concept of law. Generation of the law by state-bodies and the legal order conceptualized as a vertical hierarchy of norms. All relevant regulation has to be pre-formulated by legislation. Separation of competences between the federal parliament and the provincial legislative bodies. Non-legislative rules and regulations − like by-laws and decrees − have to be explicitly permitted by statute and have to fit into the legal order. Other social laws like religious or expert laws and technical standards may exist besides statute as long as there are no collisions. Ensured e.g. by the freedom of religion (Art. 4 GG) or within the private autonomy guarantee. As a standard of legality they can only be drawn on as far as they are approved by the statutory legal order and jurisdiction.
The principles of the supremacy of statutory law and the pre-formulation of state-actions by legislation (_Vorrang und Vorbehalt des Gesetzes_) are both expressions of a comprehensive concept of obligation to the law and control. Executive actions, therefore, are strictly bound to the law, i. e. an explicit statutory competence is required whenever individual human rights are affected by a state act. This competence not only approves the act, but at the same time restricts it to the legally approved. The more intense the affection to human rights is, the more specifically the competence has to be formulated by legislation in order to provide the encroachment with the necessary democratic legitimacy and - from a rule of law point of view - proportionality (for competences in the case of privacy relevant security measures see German Constitutional Court, decisions of March 4, 2004 (Acoustic surveillance of private living space), and March 11, 2008 (License plate scan).
In the German understanding of _Rechtsstaatlichkeit{_}_,_the obligation of executive actions to the law is accompanied by the requirement of close judicial review with a strict standard of review (Art. 20 III GG). It is ensured by the independency of the judges (Art. 97 GG) and by a complex system of different recourses to the courts and stages of appeal for judicial self-control. Procedural law is approved a self-consistent legal matter with its specific dogmatics. In cases of state actions against individuals access to judicial review is guaranteed within the basic rights canon (Art. 19 IV GG). Only exceptionally, judicial review may not be compulsorily exercised by courts but by adequate control instances. E. g. for the control of intelligence a confident parliamentary control is approved (see German Constitutional Court, decision of December 15, 1970 (Telephone surveillance for intelligence purposes)). And within the range of individual autonomous choice of action non-state arbitration bodies may serve for judicial review purposes instead of courts. In cases of criminal court procedure, constitutional rights guarantee fair trial principles (Art. 101-103 GG).
The legislative and its obligation to the constitution (Art. 20 III GG) and especially basic rights is controlled by the Federal Constitutional Court ("_Bundesverfassungsgericht_", Art. 92-93 GG). The instrument of individual constitutional complaint ("_Verfassungsbeschwerde_", Art. 93 Abs. 1 Nr. 4a GG) keeps this control in dynamic, the Courts competence to dismiss statutory law provides the necessary force for effectiveness. This, over a period of sixty years since the inactment of the _Grundgesetz_ the German legal order has been smoothly but comprehensively "constitutionalized" (see Schuppert / Bumke 2000).
h2. III. _Rechtsstaatlichkeit_ and the democratic principle
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The obligation of parliamentary decisions to the constitution and the strong position of the constitutional court within the constitutional setting are far from being unchallenged as they may lead to an unbalance between the principle of democracy and the rule of law in favor of the latter. _Rechtsstaatlichkeit_ limits - and shall limit - the range of legitimate state action, including the parliament's range of decision. Democracy in the German understanding is disciplined by the rule of law in multiple relations: (1) According to the _Grundgesetz_ all democratic state actions have to originate in the people (Art. 20 II GG). In a common sense, the rule is interpreted as the requirement of specific competence laws and the exercise of state action by a personnel whose legitimacy originates the parliament. Thus, democratic concers are formalized and torn into rule of law issues. (2) On the base of human rights guarantees the ground and the limits of individual freedoms become an issue of constitutional law and can be enforced with the help of the courts. Thus, the matter is withdrawn from democratic deliberation and transferred to the courts for ensuring lawfulness and proportionality in a legal sense. (3) Due to its far reaching competences on an international scale the Constitutional Court can put an end to political and social debates _ex cathedra_ by adding the "constitutional full-stop"; often enough succeeding in re-integrating the opponent political sides. (4) Under the term of defendable or arguable democracy, a number of legal instruments are approved - like the prohibition of political parties (Art. 21 II GG) or the loss of basic rights (Art. 18 GG), both to be stated by the constitutional court \-, that allow to interrupt democratic discourse for the purpose of ensuring the liberal democratic fundamental order of the state.
h2. IV. Formal or substantive conceptions of Rechtsstaatlichkeit?
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The question remains unanswered, to which extent the German understanding of _Rechtsstaatlichkeit_ relates only to the formal requirements of the obligation to the law and judicial review but encompasses additional material elements in the sense of a "thicker conception of the rule of law" (Tamanaha 2004: ...). In order to be able to take position in this controversy the meaning of _Rechtsstaatlichkeit{_}in relation to other structural principle of constitutionality has to be taken into account, especially in relation to the principle of democracy and to the constitutional guarantee of basic human rights. If the constitutional demands are all reduced to their normative core in order to avoid overlaps, a formal variant of the rule of law will cover the more technical aspects to legal state actions ("how to rule?") - obligation to formal statute law, structures of state organization and judicial review and the liability of public authorities to pay compensation \-, while the political substance that gives state actions direction ("rule to which aim?") is excluded from such a thinner conception of the rule of law. A more substantive understanding in the sense of a thicker conception, however, would not separate formal and material elements. Beyond the harmonizing contradicting freedom interests it would include also the ensuring of the normative preconditions that the realization of the law and especially individual human rights claims are based on instead (vgl. Kunig 2001: 434).
According to the majority understanding, the normative substance of the German rule of law as a constitutional principle - and legal standard for the constitutional courts - is reduced to the rules explicitly mentioned in the _Grundgesetz_. Thus, further substantive elements of the rule of law turn into political claims while, n the other hand, from the perspective of a formal understanding of the rule of law no substantive content gets lost as far as they are regulated elsewhere. For this reason, in parallel to the unfolding of the constitutional order of the _Grundgesetz_ within the German legal order by the courts it was spoken of the "reformalizing of the rule of law", because it had constantly been limited to the approval of the positivity of statutory law (Grimm 1980: 704.).
h2. V. Preconditions of Rechtsstaatlichkeit
Terminologically, the principle of _Rechtsstaatlichkeit,_ according to the German _Grundgesetz,_ can be differed from human rights guarantee and from the democratic principle. However, the parallel historical development of these conceptions will always determine each others meanings, and they can only unfold completely embedded in a context that encompasses the whole canon. Even if the liberal and secular state may feed upon preconditions that it could not guarantee by itself, as _Böckenförde_ (1969) pointed out, it may intend to preserve its moral and political grounds by adequate institutional and legal structures. In order to preserve the social preconditions of _Rechtsstaatlichkeit_, the _Grundgesetz_ not only contains the principle of the social welfare state as a binding constitutional objective, but it also allows public school supervision (Art. 7 GG), it ensures free information by broadcast and press (Art. 5 I GG) , and it protects religiously guided conveying of values and meaning in an individual and a collective dimension (Art. 4 GG). _Rechtsstaatlichkeit_ in the sense of a German understanding of the rule of law will always be bound to the context of the democratic and social constitutional state.
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<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Verdana; panose-1:2 11 6 4 3 5 4 4 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536871559 0 0 0 415 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} p {mso-margin-top-alt:auto; margin-right:0cm; mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; margin-left:0cm; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:595.3pt 841.9pt; margin:70.85pt 70.85pt 2.0cm 70.85pt; mso-header-margin:35.4pt; mso-footer-margin:35.4pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} -->Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde (1969): Entstehung und Wandel des Rechtsstaatsbegriffs, in: Recht, Staat, Freiheit, 1991, 143 \-....
Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde (1992): Rechtsstaat, in: Ritter/Gründer (Ed.), Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Vol. 8, 332-....
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Neil D. MacCormick (1984): Der Rechtsstaat und die Rule of Law, Juristenzeitung ..., 65\-
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Gunnar Folke Schuppert/ Christian Bumke (2000): Die Konstitutionalisierung der Rechtsordnung
Katharina Sobota (1997): Das Prinzip Rechtsstaat
Michael Stolleis, Rechtsstaat, in: Adalbert Erler/ Ekkehard Kaufmann (Ed.), Handwörterbuch der Rechtsgeschichte, Bd. IV, 1990, Sp. 367 ff.
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