The Invisible Constitution in Comparative Perspective

Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2014 edn.), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), 

https://plato.stanford.edu/

archives/fall2014/entries/plato-metaphysics/

. These are different terms that are used here inter-

changeably, although for certain purposes the differences between them may matter.

52 

Ibid.

53 

Plato, Republic, VII 514 a, 2 to 517 a, 7.

54 

Others before me have referred to Plato or to Platonism to describe similar phenomenon to the 

ones I aim to describe here. Steve Smith in his book, Law’s Quandary (see note 9) lists a few 

of those, including Richard Posner, who used the term to describe Langdellian conceptualism 

(Richard A. Posner, “The Decline of Law as an Autonomous Discipline: 1962–1987” 1987 100 

Harvard Law Review 761, 762); Brian Bix, who used the term to describe Michael Moore’s natu-

ral law theory (Brian Bix, Jurisprudence: Theory and Context, 2nd edn (Durham, NC: Carolina  

Academic, 1999), 72); and, most closely to my aim here, David Luban, who used the term 

to describe the Warren Court’s attitude toward rights, although in a much more sympathetic  

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The Platonic Conception of the Israeli Constitution 

287

lies behind the Israeli constitutional revolution. In her important article on 

constitutionalism after the Second World War, “The Post-WWII Paradigm,”

55

 

Professor Weinrib writes as follows:

The rights-protecting instruments adopted in the aftermath of the Second 

World War share a constitutional conception that transcends the history, cul-

tural heritage and social mores of any particular nation state . . . The value 

structure and corresponding institutional framework are taken to comprise 

“an objective value order.”

Accordingly, the specific rights guaranteed to individuals as legal subjects – 

the so-called “subjective rights” – crystallize the more objective abstract con-

stitutional principles of equal citizenship and inherent human dignity

56

. . . 

The subjective rights stand as instantiations of an objective normative order 

based on the principles of equal citizenship and respect for inherent human 

dignity.

57

According to Weinrib, therefore, there is an “objective value order” – a  

term that she derives from German constitutional law. This objective value 

order “transcends the history, cultural heritage and social mores of any particu-

lar nation state” and includes specific legal institutions (of which she brings 

the examples of “judicial review and possible invalidation of legislation”

58

) 

and also “objective rights.” The objective rights are differentiated from the 

“subjective rights” which are the particular text found in particular constitu-

tions. The relationship between the two clearly gives primacy to the objective 

rights over the subjective rights. The latter “crystallize” the objective rights, 

they are “instantiations” of the objective rights, and they are “important but 

not exhaustive exemplars” of the objective rights.

The analogy to Plato’s Idealism should be clear by now. The constitutional 

text in this analogy is the Matter, Substance, and phenomena. This is so, since 

it is but an imperfect, flawed, and temporal manifestation of the pure Form 

and Idea which is the “objective right” or “objective value order.” It is, in that 

view than mine toward it (David Luban, “The Warren Court and the Concept of a Right” 

(1999) 34 Harvard Civil Rights – Civil Liberties Law Review 7, 37). Smith himself uses the term 

to describe a general attitude to law (164–70). I therefore do not take credit for inventing this 

concept, but I think that my account puts it to the fore more than most other accounts, and 

applies it to a particular set of recent phenomena all taking place within constitutional law in 

ways that are different from other accounts.

55 

Lorraine Weinrib, “The Postwar Paradigm and American Exceptionalism” in Sujit Choudhry 

(ed.) The Migration of Constitutional Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 

84.

56 

Ibid.

, at 90.

57 

Ibid.

, at 94.

58 

Ibid.

, at 90.

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288