Eine Geschichte namens Verfassung: Hannah Arendts Rechtsdenken zwischen Isonomie und Autorität

Abstract

This article presents the legal thought of Hannah Arendt as a post-foundationalist account of constitutional authority. Where authority has traditionally been understood as a hierarchical concept, akin to rule or domination, Arendt democratizes the notion of authority by tying institutional durability to a continual renewal through acts of refounding. Arendt’s account of law can be understood as constituted by two dialectical relationships: a dialectics of isonomy, in which a protective function interacts with an enabling function, giving rise to a political notion of legal equality; and, secondly, a dialectics of authority, in which acts of founding are mediated with durability by means of a “principle” (from Latin principium, beginning). Arendt thus shifts the attention from a philosophical concern with normative grounds to a political theory of institutional temporality - a move with profound implications, as it locates a contested politics of memory within the symbolic dimension of legal order. Keywords: authority - collective memory - constitutionalism - equality - Hannah Arendt - isonomy - law - post-foundationalism - principle - temporality