Between Facts and Norms - Contributions to a ... - Blogs Unpad

123------------- -A Reconstructive Approach to Law Ithe above basic rights guarantee what we now call the privateautonomy of legal subjects only in the sense that these subjectsreciprocally recognize each other in their role of addressees of lawsand therewith grant one another a status on the basis of which theycan claim rights and bring them to bear against one another. Onlywith the next step do legal subjects also become authors of theirlegal order, to be exact, through the following:4. Basic rights to equal opportunities to participate in processes ofopinion- and will-formation in which citizens exercise their politicalautonomy and through which they generate legitimate law.This category of rights is reflexively applied to the constitutionalinterpretation and the further political development or elaborationof the basic rights abstractly identified in ( 1) through ( 4). Forpolitical rights ground the status of free and equal active citizens.This status is self-referential insofar as it enables citizens to changeand expand their various rights and duties, or "material legalstatus," so as to interpret and develop their private and civicautonomy simultaneously. Finally, with a view toward this goal, therights listed thus far imply the following:5. Basic rights to the provision ofliving conditions that are socially,technologically, and ecologically safeguarded, insofar as the currentcircumstances make this necessary if citizens are to have equalopportunities to utilize the civil rights listed in ( 1) through ( 4) .In the following I will limit my comments to the four absolutelyjustified categories of civil rights; the category of social and ecologicalrights, which can be justified only in relative terms, I postponeto the final chapter. In keeping with this introductory sketch, thefollowing interpretation of civil rights should clarify the internalrelation between human rights and popular sovereignty and dissolvethe paradox in the emergence of legitimacy from legality.( 1) Norms appearing in the form oflaw entitle actors to exercisetheir rights or liberties. However, one cannot determine which ofthese laws are legitimate simply by looking at the form of individualrights. Only by bringing in the discourse principle can one show'that each person is owed a right to the greatest possible measure oequal liberties that are mutually compatible. According to thi