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The question remains unanswered, to which extent the German understanding of Rechtsstaatlichkeit relates only to the formal requirements of the requirement of formal legality - i.e. obligation to the law and judicial review - but encompasses additional material elements in the sense of a "thicker conception also to a number of additional requirements - like democracy, individual rights and social welfare - to the point of a "thick substantive formulation of the rule of law" as Brian Tamanaha (Tamanaha 2004: ...)91) has put it. In order to be able to take position in this controversy the meaning of Rechtsstaatlichkeit in relation relation to other structural principle principles 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 conceptionsubstantive formulation, however, would not separate formal and material elements of the rule of law, but, instead, emphasize their interdependence. Beyond the harmonizing harmonization of contradicting freedom interests, it would also include also the ensuring of the normative preconditions that the realization of the rule of law and especially the formulation of individual human rights claims are based on instead (vgl. see Kunig 2001: 434).
According to the majority understanding, The majority of interpretors in germany, however, reduces the normative substance of the German rule of law Rechtsstaatlichkeit, as a constitutional principle - and as a 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 on 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 it is regulated elsewhere. For this reason, in parallel 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 was limited to the approval of the positivity of statutory law. Therefore, Dieter Grimm spoke of the "reformalizing of the rule of law as a postulate of democracy" (Grimm 1980: 704.).
V. Preconditions of Rechtsstaatlichkeit
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