Note 106 — Part III GROUP ORGANIZATION DEMOCRACY’S METHOD (continued 2)

See “Traité de Droit Constitutionnel” and “Études de Droit Public”: I, L’État, Le Droit Objectif et La Loi Positive; II, L’État, Les Gouvernants and Les Agents.

As in French droit may be either law or a right, Duguit, in order to distinguish between these meanings, follows the German distinction of objektives Recht and subjektives Recht, and speaks of le droit objectif and le droit subjectif, thus meaning by le droit objectif merely law. But because he at the same time writes of power as resting on function in contradistinction to the classical theory of the abstract “rights” of man, rights apart from law and only declared by law, political writers sometimes speak of Duguit’s “objective” theory of law, as opposed to a “subjective” theory of law, when jurists would tell us that law is objective, and that subjective right is always merely a right, my right. This matter of terminology must be made much clearer than it is at present.