From the legal point of view, the defects of this programme are no less serious. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to know what authority and what meaning should be attached to the fundamental rights. What precisely does such a phrase as one in Article 109 mean? “Privileges or discriminations due to birth or rank and recognized by law are abolished.” Does, again, the provision in Article 115, according to which “The house of every German is his sanctuary and is inviolable,” prevent a commissioner of buildings from dividing spacious lodgings in order to combat a housing crisis? What is still more regrettable is that the Constitution never specifies to what extent the fundamental rights have or have not legal force. Do all previously enacted laws that are irreconcilable with fundamental rights in the Constitution cease to operate the moment the Constitution comes into force? Should not this solution be applicable only to laws enacted after the adoption of the Constitution and for such of their provisions as are contrary to the Constitution? Or must it be interpreted that the fundamental rights have no importance other than to constrain legislatures to subject existing legislation to the principles these rights proclaim, and to vote only for laws that conform to these principles? Finally, are not these fundamental rights merely general indications which may be expected to have such moral force as they can impose on the legislature? It was attempted to bring some clarity into the chaos of the discussions on this head. At first a proposal was made according to which any one had the right to complain before a tribunal of all injurious violations of fundamental rights. This was rejected; for otherwise any one belonging to the middle classes could complain on the basis of the provision of Article 164, according to which “The independent … middle-class shall be fostered,” and claim that the provision was a dead letter. There was voted, however, on the first reading a provision according to which the fundamental rights would constitute “a course and a limitation for legislation, administration, and jurisprudence in the Reich and in the States.” This phrase would have increased, without any possible ambiguity, the immediate legal efficacy of the fundamental rights. It was, however, done away with at the second reading, for it would not have been applicable except to provisions which have a positive content, and it would have had, aside from this, only the character of an abstract maxim for scholastic manuals. It was decided, therefore, not to specify in any way whatever the legal significance of the articles of the Constitution relating to fundamental rights and duties. It would fall to legislators, judges and public officers to interpret in the future each of these articles separately, and to be guided according to the results of this interpretation. If, however, one may attempt such an