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

5The Indeterminacy of Law and the Rationality ofAdjudicationI have introduced the system of rights and the principles of theconstitutional state in connection with issues familiar from modernnatural law. The shift in perspective undertaken in the course ofthis analysis, from contractarian theories to discourse theory, didnot imply any change in the level of abstraction. The occasionalillustrative allusions to the legal systems of the German FederalRepublic or the United States reminded us, however, that constitutionalrights and principles, while indeed defined in abstracto, canonly be found in historical constitutions and political systems. Theyare interpreted and embodied in concrete legal orders-at thelevel of cultural symbolism in constitutional law, at the level of theaction system in the corresponding institutions and processes.Such matters are the object of comparative law and politicalscience; they are not our topic of discussion, though they do touchon it indirecdy. Different legal orders not only represent differentways of realizing the same rights and principles; they can alsoreflect different paradigms of law. By the latter I mean the exemplaryviews of a legal community regarding how the system of rightsand constitutional principles can be actualized in the perceivedcontext of a given society.A paradigm of law draws on a model of contemporary society toexplain how constitutional rights and principles must be conceivedand implemented if in the given context they are to fulfill thefunctions normatively ascribed to them. A "social model oflaw" (touse Franz Wieacker's term) represents something like the implicit