ABSTRACT
Is the state responsible for acts done in its name? Merely to ask the question is to reveal a profound change in public law. The men of the Revolution would have been astonished at the demand. The Declaration of Rights, Constitutions, the statutes of the Revolutionary period—in none of these is there a single text which makes any allusion to a general responsibility on the part of the state. There is affirmation, of course, that the individual has the right to certain guarantees against arbitrary power. They are found, however, in the separation of the powers, in the divisions of functions, in the responsibility of officials. No one thought that they could be found, and are essentially found, in the responsibility of the state. To-day a highly sanctioned and widely cast state responsibility is regarded as the best safeguard of individual freedom. We have to trace the stages of this evolution.
