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

124Chapter 3principle, just those regulations are legitimate that satisfy therequirement that the rights of each be compatible with equal rightsfor all. In fact, Kant's principle o£ law coincides with this generalright to equal liberties. It simply holds that a legal code should beset up in the form of legitimately distributed rights that guarantee theprotection of the private autonomyoflegal subjects. Naturally, withthese rights alone the legal code is not yet completely institutionalized.To render this code applicable within a determinate legalcommunity, one must demarcate the bounds of membership andprovide legal remedies for cases o£ rights violations.(2) Unlike moral rules, legal rules do not norm possible interactionsbetween communicatively competent subjects in general butthe interaction contexts of a concrete society. This follows simplyfrom the concept of the positivity of law, that is, from the facti cityof making and enforcing law. Legal norms stem from the decisionsof a historical legislature; they refer to a geographically delimitedlegal territory and to a socially delimitable collectivity of legalconsociates, and consequently to particular jurisdictional boundaries.These limitations in historical time and social space resultsimply from the fact that legal subjects cede their authorizations touse coercion to a legal authority that monopolizes the means oflegitimate coercion and if necessary employs these means on theirbehalf. Every earthly monopoly on violence, even that of a worldgovernment, has finite dimensions, which remain provincial incomparison with the future and the universe. Hence the establishmentof a legal code calls for rights that regulate membership in adeterminate association o£citizens, thus allowing one to differentiatebetween members and nonmembers, citizens and aliens. In communitiesorganized as national states, such rights assume the formof rights that define membership in a state. The external aspects ofsuch membership, which depend on the recognition of a governmentin accordance with international law, are not our concern atthis point. Internally, membership status forms the basis for ascribingthe rights and duties that together constitute the status ofcitizen. From the application of the discourse principle, it followsthat each person must be protected from a unilateral deprivationof membership rights but must in turn have the right to renouncethe status of a member. The right to emigrate implies that member-