Hegel, Philosophy of Right – Part 2

The Criminal Law – or: the relationship between the state and the citizen.

In criminal law, the form of civil proceedings is maintained: the state is a party, in the form of the public prosecutor

The accused is the other party, and the judge formally has to decide between the two

Factually, both the public prosecutor and the judge are representatives of the state, which appears as the injured party in criminal law. In criminal proceedings, the injured right is restored, not the victim compensated.
The state thus appears in two different forms.

Generally, the same applies in criminal proceedings: the state, as the monopoly of violence, enforces the law, which, through its codification, gives the appearance of objectivity and, through actual violence, its validity

 

International or Public Law

Everything that has been said about law so far finds its truth and its limit in international law: here, the monopoly of violence faces each other.

This means that international law only applies insofar as there is a world power that holds the monopoly of violence over other states – but this power then stands above the law, as demonstrated by the USA in Yugoslavia and Iraq.

However, the hegemony of the USA is no longer undisputed – as a result, international law is contested

Examples of the necessity of violence as presented by Hegel internally, externally, and the contradictions and powerlessness of unrecognized states

Examples: Afghanistan and Palestine