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15 - Conservative Critiques of the Rechtsstaat

from Part IV - Pathologies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 August 2021

By
Peter C. Caldwell
Edited by
Jens Meierhenrich  and
Martin Loughlin
Jens Meierhenrich
Affiliation:
London School of Economics
Martin Loughlin
Affiliation:
London School of Economics
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Summary

Given the connection of “law and order” politics with conservatism, the idea of a conservative critique of the Rechtsstaat at first seems contradictory. After all, wasn’t John Adams’s insistence on defending the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre used as evidence for his conservatism? Didn’t Burke’s criticism of the French Revolution revolve around the preservation of law as part of a concrete order? But law and order are not identical and it is in the tension between the rule of law and the well ordered society that the possibility for conservative critique of the Rechtsstaat lies. In a time of revolutionary upheaval, furthermore, when revolutionaries proclaim the law, the legal side of “law and order” can come under fire as well.

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The Cambridge Companion to the Rule of Law , pp. 278 - 294
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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