Vol. XXXVIII / 1 - Studia Moralia

222 HANS J. MÜNK
the state. Without this “the survival of a free democratic
community and the modern affluent society of industrial
nations is jeopardised”. 9 The ethical foundations legitimating
the state are at issue here. They urgently require that
implementing a programme of sustainable development be
treated as a function of the state. The state is called to apply
appropriate steering measures so as to co-ordinate and make
compatible the sub-systems of society that are constantly
developing under the momentum of their own internal laws and
to ultimately assure overall compatibility. These systems are
interdependent upon one another, e.g. the efficiency of social
welfare depends to a large extent on the state of the economy.
The sustainability model emphasises the importance of
integrating the workings of the various social sub-systems so as
to be conducive to general welfare. In order to do this, the state
must exercise its right to make and carry out collectively binding
decisions. The ethical dimension of this right stands in a
constant relationship to the ethical dimension of the state,
whereby law is not to be understood as an immediate
instrument for executing pre-defined ethical norms. The task of
concrete politics is to negotiate that which can be achieved in
the interest of general welfare and to establish its social validity,
to which end legal steering instruments are needed. Law is thus
distinguished from politics: it is bound to the values and
priorities formulated in the constitution in a special way. 10
Sufficiently integrating the sustainability model into
constitutions is itself not only a legal, but in a certain respect,
also an ethical issue. There is also a clear international
dimension to the issue. The countries of the North are perhaps
not yet sufficiently aware of an important feature of
international ethics that could have major repercussions at the
level of international legal regulation: protection of the
environment as “public property” only extends to a country’s
own borders. Environmental problems on the other hand do not
respect countries’ claims to sovereignty. Strictly speaking, when
9
Der Rat von Sachverständigen für Umweltfragen, Umweltgutachten
1994 (cf. note 5) p. 61.
10
Cf. op. cit., p. 61f.