Are law and prophecy, as well as social order and social transformation, necessarily antagonistic forces? What kind of legal system does a democratic society need to establish new and more relevant conditions for its operation? A dialogue between theology, law, and politics could offer new perspectives for both the Catholic Church and our contemporary societies (paper given at the Research Center Religion and Transformation of the University of Vienna – 18/12/2025).
Catholic theology has long lost interest in law as a means of articulating meaning and legitimacy of religious faith’s presence in the public square. From the tradition of great scholasticism, it has taken philosophical reason as its exclusive point of reference in the course of Western modernity. In doing so, theology has engaged in intense dialogue with philosophical reason while neglecting the development of the legal aspect. In this way, Catholic theology has forgotten that the great scholastic tradition was one of the foremost protagonists in the construction of Western law that accompanied the “Europeanization of the world” (Paolo Prodi).
One could argue that, between the two great cultural strands that made the Westernization of Christianity possible Catholic theology increasingly chose the Greek strand of philosophical reason over the Roman one of legal reason. This positioning of theological reason left it unprepared for the fact that European public reason was formed mainly by “fundamental reference to law” (Jean-Marc Ferry)—and not to philosophy.
This choice has had consequences also for theology’s role within the Catholic Church, which established law as the cornerstone for the practical exercise of power over lived faith. While the philosophical fulfillment of modernity established law as an instrument and expression of the state’s supreme power, theological inertia placed it entirely within the absolute jurisdiction of papal power.
Both the nation-state and the Catholic Church, which has no longer a state territory, will make out of the code the exclusive vehicle for the application of the force of law, so that medieval legal-theological wisdom went lost. This wisdom understood law as a social fact over which political (both secular and religious) power had no primacy.
The Case of Synodality
Today, Catholic theology is beginning to recognize the consequences of neglecting law. However, it still approaches this issue from a modern perspective, either by engaging in dialogue with philosophy of law or by advocating for a reformulation of the Code of Canon Law to enable a synodal process within the Church. However, on both theoretical (philosophy of law) and practical (Code of Canon Law) levels, this theological rediscovery of law cannot incorporate those “postmodern developments” (Paolo Grossi) that should interest it most: limitation and a steering criticism of power (political and religious).
The case of synodality is exemplary. Asserting that only a modification of the Code of Canon Law can make synodality effective fails to grasp that synodality in itself is already a matter of law that shapes a legal system by virtue of being a concrete fact of the ecclesial social body organized synodally.
The synodal gathering of the Catholic Church is, of course, a legal system sui generis, but for historical reasons and not substantive ones. This is because, like the nation-states that emerged from modernity, the Catholic Church has abolished the plurality of legal systems that characterized it for more than a millennium.
Now, the practice of synodality has generated an internal legal system within the Church that is not subjected to the Code of Canon Law. This power of justice[1] within the Church is not that of the supreme power of jurisdiction, which, since Vatican I, has coincided with the body of the roman Pontiff.
Synodality will only be able to operate as a force in the law, that limits the force of law, if we resist the temptation to codify it—placing it in this way under the jurisdiction of the supreme power in the Church. Translating synodality into clauses of the Code deactivates its force as a legal system that establishes the overall configuration of the ecclesial institution. In my opinion, this is the major limitation of the Synodal Path of the German Church, which sought to formalize synodality into a legal statute—effectively codifying synodality itself.
In this way, synodality ceases to be an instituting force in law and becomes a force of law, thereby transforming itself into established power. At most, the holders of this power change. The outcome of the German Synodal Path clearly shows the strong attraction of the modern legal system, whose major limitation is its failure to identify a force of justice capable of limiting and steering the supreme right of established power. Recently, such inability has become dramatically evident in the ineffectiveness of the separation of powers to safeguard the democratic form of government within our western democracies.
The Right of Being Religious in the Public Square
The estrangement of theology from law is even more surprising when considering early Christianity’s ability to use it to justify its participation to the public square. In the Acts of the Apostles, Paul resorts more than once to a classic legal topos, that of Roman citizenship, to legitimize his religious argument on the stage of the polis. He does so when the religious controversy between Judaism of that time and his messianic reformulation is brought before the Roman authorities.
Paul’s arrest by this authority (cf. Acts 21:27 ff.) is presented as a means of restoring public order and is not at all anti-religious. In fact, Paul is permitted to publicly address the gathered crowd. The Roman authority refrains from intervening as long as the religious controversy surrounding Paul does not endanger the public order. Only when the religious dispute causes a new upheaval among the crowd do the authorities feel compelled to take a stand for ensuring order in the city.
As in Acts 16:19-39, the Roman authority’s intervention in this case implies a legal violation, namely the imposition of a sentence without due process. It is precisely for this reason that Paul refers to his right of citizenship. “But when they had him up with straps, Paul said to the centurion who was standing by, Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who has not been convicted?” (Acts 22:25) The Roman centurion’s reaction is immediate: “He was also afraid, for he realized that Paul was a Roman citizen and that he had bound him illegally.” (Acts 22:29)
Luke’s emphasis does not seem excessive here since “judges in Roman colonies had to be careful not to violate the rights of Roman citizens, which included freedom from arbitrary treatment, such as that reserved for Paul here” (Luke T. Johnson). Another reference to the law appears in Acts 18:12-17, where the Jews bring Paul to court on charges of preaching a cult of God contrary to Mosaic law. Faced with this request, the Roman proconsul Gallio refused to take legal action against Paul because his jurisdiction was limited to judging crimes and fraud, and the content of a religious dispute did not fall within it.
From Paul to Tertullian
Therefore, in Acts, Luke resorts to the law in passages in which he intends to justify Paul’s actions publicly. Tertullian’s Defense of Christianity follows this approach. He was the first Christian apologist to address the judges, rather than the emperor (i.e., the source of legal power). As noted, “This can be explained by the fact that, from Marcus Aurelius onward, these magistrates were responsible not only for judging anti-Christian trials arising from private complaints but also for initiating investigations of sacrileges, which hostile public opinion included Christians among.” (Marta Sordi)
Tertullian does not ask Roman judges for privileged treatment for Christian truth, but rather claims the right for such truth “not to be condemned without being known. What harm do the laws, in their realm sovereign, suffer if it is heard? Will their power receive glory because they condemn the truth without hearing it? If they condemn it without hearing it, they will not only commit an injustice, but also arouse suspicion of prejudice for not wanting to hear what they could not condemn if heard.” (Tertullian)
According to Tertullian, the proceedings against Christians are distorted by prejudice, which not only discriminates against them, but also distorts the meaning of law and “procedural fairness.”
In fact, “only Christians are not allowed to say anything that refutes the accusation, defends the truth, or doesn’t make the judge appear unjust.” (Tertullian) The legal persecution of Christians would therefore be a denial of the law itself. “This perversity should make you suspect that there is some hidden force at work, using you against procedural fairness, against the nature of judgment, even against the laws themselves.” (Tertullian).
Thus, the early centuries of Christianity saw law as the appropriate forum for dialogue to justify the legitimacy of religious faith’s presence in the public square. Of course, times had changed between Acts and Tertullian. Christianity was no longer a simple messianic sect within Judaism; it was emerging as a specific religion in its own right—one that posed a threat to the established power.
In the Acts narrative, the proconsul Gallio responded to the Jews who portrayed Paul’s messianic alternative as dangerous to the Roman order in the following way: “If these are questions of words, names, or your Law, see to it yourselves; I do not want to be a judge in such matters.” (Acts 18:15) This seems to have become the subject of Tertullian’s legal apology: “Since you treat us differently from other offenders in every way, striving only to exclude us from this name, you can understand that it is not a matter of some crime, but rather a name against which certain hostile activity is directed. This activity strives, above all, to make people refuse to acknowledge what they know they don’t know.” (Tertullian)
Christianity and the Empire
Later on, having become the civil religion of the Roman Empire, Christianity no longer needed to resort to law to justify itself—nor to assert its legitimacy in the public sphere. This legitimacy was conferred upon Christianity by a political power that had adopted it as the glue holding the empire together. The arrival of Islam, another religion that advanced a similar claim to the civil function of the sacred, prompted early scholasticism to use philosophical reason to assert its political-religious hegemony.
The Church, as religious institution of power, cultivated the law and led it toward secular modernity. Theology was left with “philosophers and reason,” which, with Aquinas’ introduction of the duplex ordo veritatis, did not threaten the roman Pontiff’s growing control over truth.
Thus, almost unnoticed, apologetics and fundamental theology became instruments of ecclesiastical power, which enjoyed a surplus of knowledge about Christian truth inaccessible to theological versus philosophical reason.
The Church’s supreme power knows things that theology cannot know on its own. And theology must obediently learn such things from this power by virtue of its legal authority, which makes them binding on faith and its understanding.
Thus, in the sacred sphere, theologians became, like jurists and lawyers in the secular one, a sort of “enzymes of power” — prevented by law from exercising any prophetic function of criticism or limitation of power.
From Power to Power
Theology lacks prophecy within the Catholic Church’s structure not because it does not criticize the established power of the magisterium, but because, in doing so, it effectively acts as a counter-power in a struggle for affirmation over another power. This substitution dynamic drives many currents of Catholic reformism: laypeople instead of clergy; women instead of men; and synodality instead of hierarchy.
Prophecy, on the other hand, critiques political and religious power, sketching a social framework in which the power of the hierarchy, the laity, the magisterium, and theology is effectively limited. The instituting force of prophecy lies in its deactivation of the aspiration to become an alternative power. “Prophecy and utopia are historically very different realities; however, they share the condition of being excluded from temples and palaces of power. Prophecy is an essential element in the history of humanity’s salvation, serving as a means of transmitting the ‘voice’ of a transcendent God who opposes the reality of the power that dominates the world. However, it has disappeared in the Catholic Church with the advent of modernity” (Paolo Prodi).
Prophecy critiques the current historical condition, which is subject to the power of worldly forces (both inside and outside the Church). It aims to concretely plan an order of human and social living together according to God’s desired justice, starting now.
From this perspective, biblical prophecy represents a “fundamental component, alongside the Law, of justice, understood in the deepest sense as the embodiment of the divine plan for relations between human beings within social life.” (Paolo Prodi) The relationship between prophecy and law as a critique and check on power deserves more thorough investigation to verify its viability, i.e., that it is not a utopia with no place in human history.
Prophecy and Law
Regarding biblical prophecy, I will refer to the Book of Amos, and regarding law, I will consider the fundamental principles of the Italian Constitution contained in its first twelve articles. Amos emphasizes more than the other prophets that civil practices of human coexistence are decisive with respect to the fidelity of the people of Israel to the Covenant with YHWH. In fact, the justice desired by God, embodied in the people’s daily social and political relations, represents the civil measure by which Israel’s fidelity to the Covenant with YHWH is evaluated.
Prophecy is an attentive reading of the history and living conditions of the people as experienced by those bearing the heaviest burdens of marginalization, poverty, social and political destitution. For the prophet, history is, above all, the silent stories of the countless victims of power. Amos contextualizes this interpretation of the situation of the two kingdoms into which Israel was divided within the events concerning the surrounding peoples.
Given the pervasive spread of injustice and violence among other peoples, one might expect Israel to be an exception—to truly embody the higher justice required by the Covenant. However, Amos bitterly observes that this is not the case. Israel also exercises power in a manner similar to other peoples and nations. This lack of distinction in the exercise of civil and political power within Israel, for the prophet, represents a true religious idolatry.
The prophet sees the abusive treatment and exploitation of the poor and weak in favor of the wealthy and ruling class as a profanation of YHWH’s name. This socio-political condition of injustice is interpreted as total forgetfulness of God’s history with his people—a history that reminds them that they were “carried” by YHWH, and Israel (with its religious and political institution) can exist only by remaining in this condition.
The memory of the Exodus emphasizes that Israel’s distinction among peoples and nations should be understood as a “de-powering” of power, not as its undue accumulation to the detriment of the people. Social injustice creates a gulf between the God whom the people consider their own and the God who addresses them through the prophet.
God’s desired justice requires shaping social bonds that do justice to the aspiration for a life worth living for all who comprise the social body (righteousness)—and not few chosen. Only an effective transformation of socio-civil relations that corresponds to the injunction of justice as righteousness can restore proper value to religious cult practices. This is the meaning of Amos’s words inviting Israel to “seek the Lord”—not in acts of worshiping a God transformed into the property of power but in regenerating justice through concrete practices that shape an equitable society.
This justice of God is “regenerative, reshaping the human community in a way that brings unity, peace, and the flourishing of all that is necessary for the life of the whole social body” (Katherine Hayes).
Justice: Prophetic and Liberal
This regenerative character of justice, highlighted by prophecy, is absent from modern and liberal conceptions of justice. In fact, it’s not just about giving everyone their due, especially when what’s due is based on biased economic interests and power relations, but about creating social, economic, and political conditions that allow everyone to live life as it should be lived, so it can be felt and appreciated as just.
Here, prophecy calls the law into question. But can prophecy find its place in the law? Can the law have its own prophetic power? In my opinion, without excessive strain, the legal framework of the first twelve articles of the Italian Constitution, which lay the foundations for the Constitution as a whole, has its own specific prophetic character. These articles are not merely inspirational criteria or moral aspirations; they are a true and fundamental articulation of the law itself, as can be inferred from the internal debates of the Constituent Assembly subcommittees that drafted the Constitution. The decisive choice was to include these fundamental principles as articles of the Constitution, rather than relegating them to a preamble, as some suggested.
The reason given for this choice was that including them in a preamble would have placed these fundamental principles at a pre-legal level. The intention, however, was to make them a true expression of the law. With these twelve fundamental principles, Italy wanted to express not only the specificity of its republican democracy—its conception of the state in relation to citizens and the social bodies in which they develop their personalities—but also its conception of constitutional law as a guarantee of democratic social and individual rights and as a steering-limit on the power of the state and citizens.
Constitution and Chōra
It is difficult to define Chōra because it eludes any determination or attempt to enclose it in a concept. Guided by the minimal suggestions found in Plato’s Timaeus, we could say that Chōra is not a concept, but rather a force perceivable in the processes it generates. At the same time, Chōra can never be identified with the generative processes it sets in motion. This elusiveness of Chōra allows us to expand the scope of language and discourse associated with its emergence, including an unlikely symbolic order, such as that of a 20th-century constitutional text.
In Plato’s Timaeus, Chōra generates movement from the ideal polis of the Republic to a concrete polis of flesh-and-blood citizens and institutions. The chōric polis is not a utopia without a place in human history but rather a duty of the citizens who are called upon to shape a just order of political coexistence. Here, prophecy and Chōra converge, calling upon the law.
And it is precisely here that the Italian Constitution shows itself up to the task. Let us start with Article 3: “All citizens have equal social dignity and are equal before the law, without distinction of sex, race, language, religion, political opinion, personal and social conditions. It is the duty of the Republic to remove those obstacles of economic and social nature which, by limiting the freedom and equality of citizens, prevent the full development of the human person and the effective participation of all workers in the political, economic, and social organization of the country.”
Chōra is a force that produces “bastard outcomes,” and this is precisely how it works in this constitutional provision. Article 3 prescribes overcoming the formal equality typical of the modern concept of justice, which, in American and French constitutionalism, was intended to guarantee and protect the property rights of the bourgeoisie at the expense of the impoverished masses.
This equality is purely formal because ownership is the prerequisite for enjoying liberal rights, which are always individual. In its formalism, this concept of justice guarantees the maintenance of inequalities and discrimination within society that serve the economic and political interests of the bourgeoisie.
In contrast to such conservative nature of formal equality, the Italian Constitution is inspired by a transformative force revolving around concrete practices of social justice. In other words, it requires the Italian Republic to alter social and economic conditions so that all citizens can enjoy democratic rights, which are social as well as individual. The transformative nature of the Italian Constitution calls for the creation of a society in which everyone can access full and active citizenship.
This generative feature of justice, understood as equity in social treatment of all citizens, obligates the Republic to implement political, social, and economic policies that treat unequal situations unequally. Thus, equality becomes substantial through the transformation of the existing order, which aims to “conform reality to the provisions enshrined in the Constitution.” (Mario Dogliani and Chiara Giorgi)
This constitutional injunction of generative justice conveys the legal awareness that democracy is never fully realized and remains a permanent task entrusted to all subjects of the Italian Republic. In other words, democracy means more than creating and maintaining democratic institutions; it must be a force of justice that inspire concrete practices of righteousness aimed at making the Republic’s order increasingly consistent with the social dignity and equal treatment of all citizens. According to Dogliani-Giorgi, this marks “the first time in the history of constitutionalism that we are moving towards recognizing the right to social and economic equality/equity and, therefore, the need for public intervention—and even more so for the institutional apparatus and social forces aimed at aligning reality with the provisions enshrined in the Constitution.”
This transformation of the country’s social and economic order is not a moral aspiration left to the goodwill of the political forces governing the Italian Republic, but rather it is imposed on the Republic and all its constituents by virtue of the constitutional law, which affirms its precedence and superiority over any other law. This transformative force of justice is not oriented toward an indeterminate future but is activated in today’s concrete reality so that every citizen’s right to dignity and equitable social treatment may be realized. This allows citizens to participate fully in their country’s life and enjoy full citizenship.
The State Subjected to the Force of Justice
In Plato’s Timaeus, another aspect of Chōra can be linked to this force of justice. This aspect enjoins a transformation of existing social, economic, and political structures according to justice. This is the disruptive force that Chōra exerts on the established order of human society.
According to Kristeva, this order of power is expressed primarily in law and the force of law as systems of symbolic domination. While I agree with Kristeva regarding the force of law, I believe that the fundamental principles of the Italian Constitution, which enshrine the idea of law as force of justice, are closer to prophecy and Chōra than she proposes. This interpretation differs also from Agamben’s understanding of law as an instrument of state power.
The force of justice not only limits power (that of the state, citizens, governments, and parliament) but also guides it by exercising a legal normativity that does not depend on the force of law or the power of the state. At least, this is the conception of law that structures the Italian Constitution.
Addressing one of the sub-committees of the Constituent Assembly, the Catholic jurist Giorgio La Pira (1904-1977) remarked that the new Italian constitution is “necessarily linked to the harsh experience of the totalitarian state […] which denied the existence of original human rights prior to the state. Indeed, by accepting the theory of ‘reflected rights,’ it advocated and executed this thesis: There are no natural or original rights for humans; there are only concessions and reflected rights. These ‘concessions’ and ‘reflected rights’ can be totally or partially withdrawn at any time according to the will of the entity from which these rights derive—that is, the state.”
According to La Pira, Nazi-Fascist and Russian Marxist totalitarianism represent a metaphysical, legal, and political crisis resulting in the absorption of the individual into the collective substance of the state and the elimination of intermediate social bodies vital to the development of the human personality.
The Constitution imposes itself on established powers (state and economic) because “it shows that the state must be built with the person in mind, not vice versa. It also indicates what these essential and original rights of the human being are and to what extent the constitutional and political apparatus of the state must protect them.” (La Pira) Alongside the individual rights typical of modern bourgeois society (equality and freedom), La Pira emphasized the need for constitutional guarantees of civil and social rights. “As required by a substantially democratic conception of the state, these rights allow for the implementation of liberal rights, thus making the autonomy and independence of the individual, including political independence, effective.”
La Pira’s vision of the state is organicist; he sees Italian society as a plurality of social orders predating the state. As such, the state must recognize and guarantee these orders, limiting its own power. This is “economic, legal, and political pluralism because the reality of this social body is not solely made up of individuals. People naturally group into organizations that are essential and indispensable elements of the social body. From the individual, we move to the state through the mediation of prior systems whose existence the state cannot ignore.” (La Pira)
Aldo Moro (1916-1978), one of the most prominent actors of Italian politics after World War II, took up the theme of the force of justice as a limit and regulatory control of established powers during the final discussion in the Constituent Assembly before the approval of the Constitution. For Moro, it was clear that this constituent phase of the country after fascist totalitarianism meant constructing “a new state” and determining “a formula for living together.” This construction moves from the complex and plural reality of the social body, which is the agent that shapes the Italian state as a republic. Thus, the actual society is not only within the Constitution but also finds affirmation of its legal (and therefore normative) precedence over the state itself in it.
Force of Justice: Limiting and Steering the Sovereign Power of the People
The first article of the Italian Constitution is the cornerstone of the force of justice as a disruptive element of any established order of power that will gradually take shape following the movements of the social body: “Italy is a Republic founded on work. Sovereignty belongs to the people, who exercise it in the forms and within the limits of the Constitution.”
Referring to the first part of the second paragraph, Moro states that it “serves well to identify the belonging of sovereignty in the broad sense, that is, the exercise of political powers and powers of orientation of public affairs in a democratic regime, to all citizens.” He then emphasizes the fundamental importance of the second part of this paragraph, which circumscribes and steers the exercise of sovereign power vested in all citizens.
According to Moro, it “specifies, after the harsh experience of fascism, that the sovereignty of the state is the sovereignty of the legal system […] The power of the state is not de facto or pre-existing power, but rather, power that finds its foundation and limits within the legal system formed by the Constitution and laws.”
Thus, a constitutional state emerges, whose “democracy is no longer purely parliamentary or popular in the sense of a democracy of the general will, which is essentially constructed according to the rule of the majority. Before the people who elect their majority and representatives, there are the people who established the fundamental rules of their existence in the Constitution. Before the political direction of the majority, there is the constitutional direction. The latter prevails over the former. The Constitution therefore precedes all constituted power, including that of the legislator representing the sovereign people. This idea of constitutional supremacy was revived after the war to effect radical change and reassure everyone that a fundamental law would prevent the return of the recent dictatorial past. The primary meaning of the democratic constitution is guarantee and limitation. Democracy exists to prevent anyone from ever practicing a policy we could define as absolute, such as Vernichtung, the annihilation of the opponent’s person.” (Maurizio Fioravanti)
This primacy of the democratic Constitution has sought to subvert the existing order on the one hand and to constrain in a constructive way established power on the other, allowing something of Chōra to flow through it. However, this force of justice is not a machine that runs on its own. It requires the energy of a citizenry that, accepting the limitations of its sovereignty to expand it towards the universality of human rights, aspires to participate fully in building the polis where many different people live together. Today, liberal democracy is running out of steam in a crisis no less dramatic than the one that led to the birth of European totalitarianism and the affirmation of an absolute policy of sovereign power less than a century ago.
We must learn from this period of our history, now behind us, not to copy it blindly but to find inspiration for a political gesture that will not surrender to the inexorable exit from democracy we are helplessly experiencing as if it were an irreversible destiny.
Shaping Democracy Anew: The Paradox of the Catholic Church
The force of justice, which shaped the highest conception of the democratic spirit of the 20th century in the form of the constitutional state, is a precious asset we can draw on to attempt the first difficult steps of a new project of living together.
Surprisingly, this attempt has found a home within the Catholic Church with the launch of the synodal process, which was strongly pushed by Pope Francis. Synodality is a true project of living together between different sensibilities of faith, well before being a function of Church government. It is a way of “working together […] towards control of the place from which one speaks and acts, working together in a situation as a political subject that aims to implement a plan, committing oneself to a place, a space, a process, an event. It is the political articulation of these spaces into a common front.” (Simon Critchely)
Synodality is a huge, global laboratory in which an unprecedented listening process has begun. Everyone speaks from their own place of living and acting with the goal of finding orientations that everyone can recognize as their own without having to renounce their originality.
Compared to the current state of democracies, synodality appears to be an anti-authoritarian exercise that welcomes the instituting power of the people of God. This power corresponds to the gathering power of the Spirit within human history. Thus, in the midst of the world order’s great transformations and upheavals, the synodality of the Catholic Church preserves the empty place of power, without which no democratic form of human coexistence is possible.
The Empty Place of Power and Synodality
This empty place attracts the most beautiful souls like the sirens of Ulysses. Those who have tasted the thrill of settling in it for even a moment are ready to move heaven and earth to ensure that nothing changes, perhaps updating the lexicon to be less ruthless and making the Church power a little bit more palatable to those who have seen God’s place snatched from under their noses.
The unavailability and inaccessibility of this place are, of course, preserved in the Gospel and Scriptures. However, if we are honest about the institutional history of the Catholic Church, we must acknowledge that the Gospel alone is insufficient to safeguard the inviolability of the place of God’s power.
This harsh fact suggests the need for a serious debate on a possible constitution for the Catholic Church (lex fundamentalis ecclesiae), which was quickly dismissed between the council and the post-council period.
The synodal Church needs this Lex for various reasons, some of which have been mentioned here. Above all, it is needed to reassure the people of God that synodality remains in an instituting position—a process whose order cannot be fixed in a codified manner, yet which is nonetheless a matter of law and its force of justice. Any shift of synodality toward institutionalization would mean its deactivation in favor of a more or less tempered sovereignty of power.
[1] German language has two different words – Recht and Gesetz – that in English are both translated with law. Every time I use in English “force of justice” it means “Kraft des Rechtes” as deactivation of the force of law (Gesetzkraft).
