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The State is a legal relation by virtue of which a supreme authority exists in a certain territory.

1. The State is a legal relation.

A legal relation is the relation, determined by legal norms, of an obligated party, one to whom a procedure is prescribed, to an entitled party, one for whose sake it is prescribed. Thus, for instance, the legal relation of a loan is a relation of the borrower, who is bound by the legal norms concerning loans, to the lender, for whose sake he is bound.

The State is the legal relation of all the men who by legal norms are subjected to a supreme territorial authority, to all those for whose sake they are subjected to it. Here the circle of the entitled and the obligated is one and the same; the State is a bond upon all in favor of all.

To this it might perhaps be objected that the State is not a legal relation but a person. But the two propositions, that an association of men is a person in the legal sense and that it is a legal relation, are quite compatible; nay, its attribute of personality is based mainly on its attribute of being a legal relation of a particular kind; law, in viewing the association in its outward relationships as a person, starts from the fact that men are bound together by a particular legal relation. A joint-stock corporation is a person not although, but because, it is a legal relation of a peculiar kind. And similarly, the fact that the State is a person is not only reconcilable with its being a legal relation, but is founded on its being a peculiar legal relation.

2. As to the conditions of its existence, this legal relation is involuntary.

A voluntary legal relation exists when legal norms make entrance into the relation conditional on actions of the obligated party, of which actions the purpose is to bring about the legal relation; for instance, entrance into the relation of tenancy is conditioned on agreeing to a lease. Per contra, an involuntary legal relation exists when legal norms do not make entrance into the relation conditional on any such actions of the obligated party, as, for instance, a patent is not conditioned on any action of those who are bound by it, and the sentence of a criminal is at least not conditioned on any action whereby he intended to bring it about.

If the State were a voluntary legal relation, a supreme authority could exist only for those inhabitants of a territory who had acknowledged it. But the supreme authority exists for all inhabitants of the territory, whether they have acknowledged it or not; the legal relation is therefore involuntary.

3. The substance of this legal relation is, that a supreme authority exists in a territory.

An authority exists in a territory by virtue of a legal relation when, according to the legal norms which found the relation, the will of some men—or even merely of a man—is regulative for the inhabitants of this territory. A supreme authority exists in a territory by virtue of a legal relation when according to those norms the will of some men is finally regulative for the inhabitants of the territory,—that is, is decisive when authorities disagree. What we here designate as a supreme authority, therefore, is not the men on whose will the legal norms in force in a territory are based, but rather their highest agents, whose will they would have finally regulative within the territory.

What men it is whose will is finally regulative for the inhabitants of a territory by virtue of a legal relation—for instance, members of a royal family according to a certain order of inheritance, or persons elected according to a certain election law—depends on the legal norms by which the legal relation is determined. On these legal norms, too, depends the question within what limits the will of these men is regulative. But this limited nature of the authority does not stand in the way of its being a supreme authority; the highest agent need not be an agent with unrestricted powers.

Here one might perhaps object that in federal States, in the German empire for instance, the individual States have not supreme authority. But in reality they have it. For, even if there are a multitude of subjects in reference to which the highest authority of the individual States of the German empire has to bow to the imperial authority, yet there are also subjects enough about which the highest authority of the individual States gives a final decision. As long as there are such subjects, a supreme authority exists in the individual States; if some day there should no longer be such, one could no longer speak of individual States.

4. As a legal relation, by virtue of which a supreme authority exists in a territory, the State is distinguished from all other objects, even from those that most resemble it.

By being a legal relation it is distinguished on the one hand from institutions such as would exist in a conceivable kingdom of God or of reason, on the basis of the moral law, and on the other hand from the dominion of a conqueror in the conquered country, which can never be anything but an arbitrary dominion.

Being an involuntary legal relation, the State is distinguished from a conceivable association of men who should set up a supreme authority among themselves by an agreement, as well as from leagues under international law, in which a supreme authority exists on the basis of an agreement.

The fact that by virtue of a legal relation an authority over a territory is given distinguishes the State from the tribal community of nomads and from the Church; for in the former there is given an authority over people of a certain descent, in the latter over people of a certain faith, but in neither over people of a certain territory. And finally, in the fact that this territorial authority is a supreme authority lies the difference between the State and towns, counties, or provinces; in the latter there is indeed a territorial authority instituted, but one that by the very intent of its institution must bow to a higher authority.

5. What is briefly summed up in the definition of the State may be expanded as follows, if one takes into consideration on the one hand the previous definition of a legal norm and on the other hand the above explanations of the definition of the State:

Some inhabitants of a territory are so powerful that their will is competent to affect the inhabitants of this territory in their procedure, and these men will have it that for all the inhabitants of the territory, for themselves as well as for the rest, the will of men picked out in a certain way shall within certain limits be finally regulative. When such is the condition of things, a State exists.