Total State, Total Constitution

The ‘total state’ is a polemical concept used by constitutional theorists in the 1930s to characterise a decline of state authority: a state made to intervene into all areas of social life becomes, in their view, weak. This concept can be transferred, for heuristic purposes, to the authority of constitutional law. A total constitution is omnirelevant – no longer meant only to curb state action, but also to guide policymaking. Like the total state, the law of the total constitution risks becoming prey to the forces ruling the day. This weakness is exacerbated when adjudicating bodies embrace symbolic politics. The KlimaSeniorinnen decision of the European Court of Human Rights serves to elucidate this issue.