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

128. citizen's practice of self-determination other than the discourseprinciple, which is built into the conditions of communicativeIr association in general, and the legal medium as such. If the.discourse principle is to be implemented as the democratic prin­' ciple with the help of equal communicative and participatoryJrights, then the legal medium must be enlisted. To be sure_, theestablishmentoftb legal code as such alreadyirn-£.!les li ightstht begefthe status oflegal persons and guaranteetFielr inity.But as soon as the legal medium is used to instituiloīiaT ize theexercise of political autonomy, these rights become necessaryenabling conditions; as such, they cannot restrict the legislator'ssovereignty, even though they are not at her disposition. Enablingconditions do not impose any limitations on what they constitute.( Taken simply for themselves, neither the discourse principle northe legal form (of interactive relationships) suffices to ground anyright. The principle of discourse can assume the shape of a) principle of democracy through the medium oflaw only insofar as/ the discourse principle and the legal medium interpenetrate anddevelop into a system of rights that brings private and publicautonomy into a relation of mutual presupposition. Conversely,every exercise of political autonomy signifies both an interpreta-. tion and specific elaboration of these fundamentally "unsaturated"rights by a historical legislator. This also holds for the politicalrights made use of in this process. The principle that all "governmentalauthority derives from the people" must be specified accordingto circumstances in the form of freedoms of opinion andinformation; the freedoms of assembly and association; the freedomsof belief, conscience, and religious confession; entitlementsto participate in political elections and voting processes; entitlementsto work in political parties or citizens' movements, and soforth. In the constitution-making acts of a legally binding interpretationof the system of rights, citizens make an originary use of acivic autonomy that thereby constitutes itself in a performativelyself-referential manner. Thus we can understand the catalogs ofhuman and civil rights found in our historic constitutions ascontext-dependent readings of the same system of rights.! This system of rights, however, is not given to the framers of af=Onstitution in advance as a natural law. Only in a particular.r