Die Entwicklung der Bundesrepublik in normativer Nachhaltigkeit

The Basic Law stipulates a concept of sustainability that bindingly passes on tried and tested values and institutions, but also lessons from experiences of injustice to the next generation. It has consoldiated a fragile but not broken state with a newly oriented people, still uncertain state borders and a slowly growing state sovereignty to an idea of the state that is determined by inviolable human dignity, responsible freedom, equality before the differentiating law and the social affiliation of people. The Basic Law was able to come into effect and to develop because the core elements of a constitution (people, territory, constitutional language) were in place, the ideas about the substance of the constitution and the procedure of constitutionalization were approvable, and the people then lived, voted and did business in accordance with this constitution. The parliamentary resolutions gave the constitution formal binding force and legal certainty confirmed by the document. During reunification, the democratic idea and the will for tangible freedoms were preserved and strengthened after decades of heteronomy. The constitution breathes with the times, but in its sustainability it preserves the content and binding nature of its guarantees against the spirit of the times and against topicality. It renews itself in the principle of freedom and parliamentarism, and is adapted to the present by the interpretative compound of the legislature as the primary interpreter and the Federal Constitutional Court as the final interpreter. The state of the Basic Law has developed from a divided state to a reunified state, from a state guaranteeing freedom to a state managing freedom, from a disarmed state to a state participating in the system of collective security, from a shunned state to a political and economic partner as well as a member of the EU. The creative power of the constitution has proven its worth in consolidating the state territory, in insisting on the reunification mandate and in preserving the parliamentarism of the member states within the framework of a the EU conceptualised as an executive force and within security systems under international law. The liberal state governed by the rule of law (freiheitlicher Rechtsstaat) initially guarantees a defensive freedom against the Nazi regime and a welfare state oriented towards individual freedom, then a fundamental rights based duty to actively protect the freedoms of the Basic Law (grundrechtliche Schutzpflicht) that condenses into specific entitlements, and finally in the provision of services of general interest (Daseinsvorsorge) which in part amounts to heteronomy. This freedom-shaping statehood is currently reaching its limits with the overburdening of social security systems, the excessive government debt and a steering of the economy and with the state's temporary willingness to provide general insurance-like compensation, also in the context of the auctioning of rights and emissions trading. Legislation has fallen short of the constitutionally stipulated imperative of the universality of the law (Allgemeinheit des Gesetzes) and the prohibition of case-by-case legislation (Verbot des Einzelfallgesetzes). It must be reduced to regulating the essentials in order to limit the abundance of norms as a defence against bureaucracy that restricts freedom and remains in accordance with the mandate and qualifications of the members of parliament. The status of political parties and the right to vote must be democratically improved. Digitalisation offers opportunities and risks of simplifying and coarsening standardisation. In the cultivation of freedom, the law should strengthen society's self-reflection on the free word, foreseeably limit people's responsibility for freedom, but also making it unavoidable. The financial and fiscal state has experienced a strong impetus for prosperity in the unifying will to renew the social market economy, has stood the test of global co