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Excerpt from the Staats-Lexikon: "Constitution" (1845-1848)

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5) Alongside the legislative and the administrative power, and actually independent of all authorities, there must be an authority that decides in concrete cases on contentious or doubtful laws, i.e., that articulates findings that are purely scientific or left to the discretion of impartial powers of judgment concerning that which – in accordance with existing legislation – is either law or not law and which therefore is to be applied and executed as such by the constituted authorities. The establishment of courts that are independent and as reliable as possible is accordingly another main component of a constitutional order.

6) To maintain the honesty of the representative body of the people and the direction of the government appropriate to the purpose of its installation, the people and each individual among the people must unconditionally be at liberty to acquire information about public affairs and the course of their administration. Public opinion, which is almost equivalent to the rational general will, should everywhere be allowed to be developed and articulated without hindrance, and the facts concerning it, which it has the right and the calling to express, should be brought to notice undisguised and unadulterated. Publicity for government resolutions as well as for the minutes of the assembly of estates or parliaments and freedom of the press are therefore components of a constitutional order.

7) The concept of a social union, and the general will which animates this concept, presumes the equality and liberty of the members of society. The constitutional system therefore prescribes equal rights of participation in the benefits of the state, the same (legal and juridical) guarantee of personal liberty and of lawful possession and inheritance for all, the regular entitlement of all qualified to offices and titles, and also, on the other hand, the same obligation by law, the same subjugation to the same lawfully constituted and exercised authorities, and the same (i.e., corresponding to the degree of protection received for property and inheritance) participation in the burdens of the state.

8) Among the rights based upon the constitutional citizen's claim to liberty and equality are, above all, the freedom to worship their God (so long as this does not consist in actions that are inherently contrary to law or morality or order and security) and the freedom of emigration, i.e., of disassociation from the state, of which the constitutional citizen is namely just a free member, but not a serf.

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