This page deals with the idea of a Rechtsstaat vs. a Linksstaat (a new coinage, cf. below) and associated ideas like Rechtsstaatlichkeit vs. Linksstaatlichkeit.
For now, it is quite thin, with a main purpose of just being somewhere to link for a brief explanation whenever I use “Linksstaat” and its variations. Further work might follow later, however, including more on the Rechtsstaat (a term with a much longer history) and why Germany is a Linksstaat—not a Rechtsstaat.
Short version: a Left-dominated country that fails as a Rechtsstaat.
Long version:
The word “Linksstaat” is my own coinage, but is inspired by the German “Linksanwalt”, an insulting play on words directed at lawyers that (are perceived to) demonstrate poor professional ethics or otherwise fall disgracefully below the standards of the profession. (As with many insulting terms, there is no established definition and the exact implication will depend on the speaker.)
Here we have a pun on the “Rechts-” in “Rechtsanwalt” (“lawyer”), which relates to what is “legally right”, and “Rechts” and “Links” as directions (right and left, respectively). A Linksanwalt, then, is someone who should have been a Rechtsanwalt but who, so to speak, turned in the wrong direction, is an evil mirror image of a Rechtsanwalt, or similar.
In the same manner, one of the ideas behind “Linksstaat” is the equivalent on the state/country/whatnot level—something that should have been a Rechtsstaat but which turned in the wrong direction.
The second idea behind “Linksstaat” (but not “Linksanwalt”) is the dominance of the political Left in the society so labeled. This, too, is a turn in the wrong direction, as no-one who understands the Left, the history of the 20th century, whatnot, no-one who adheres to enlightenment ideals, no-one who cares for civil rights, etc., should ever be a Leftie. However, here some care must be taken, as (a) the Left–Right scale is fundamentally flawed and misleading and the metaphor of “turned Left when he should have turned Right” correspondingly too simplistic, (b) some countries, including Germany, have fallen to decades of systematic Leftist propaganda to create a false equivalence between the political “Right” and Nazis, Fascists, racists, whatnot. To, in such a country, claim “should have turned right” risks the interpretation, among the politically naive or brainwashed, of “should have been a Nazi [or whatnot]”. (For more on Left, Right, and the far Left Nazis, see e.g. a text on political scales.)
A Leftist dominance and a weak Rechtsstaatlichkeit often go hand in hand, because a core point of Rechtsstaatlichkeit is to protect the citizen against the government, while Leftism has a reverse core point of subjugating the citizen to the government (and/or a cause, a collective, whatnot). However, they are not tied together by logical necessity: Weak Rechtsstaatlichkeit can certainly occur without Leftist dominance (indeed, Rechtsstaatlichkeit is neglected more often than not even in the Western world) and Leftist dominance can at least potentially occur without weak Rechtsstaatlichkeit (if nothing else, in a transitional phase).
To look more in detail at “Recht” (note the absence of an “s”) and the associated prefix “Rechts-”, there are a wide variety of “legal” words that are related, including “Recht” it self (e.g. to imply a legal right or to refer to the law), “Rechtsstreit” (a legal dispute), “Rechtsstudium” (study of law), “Rechtsbeugung” (see excursion), and the aforementioned “Rechtsanwalt”.
However, the word also has a variety of uses in other contexts, notably, relating to what is ethically right, what rights might exist by non-legal regulation, and what someone perceives to be just or unjust.
Also note variations of “gerecht”, which roughly amounts to what is fair or right, e.g. in formulations like “es ist gerecht”—“it is fair” or “it is right”. In a less polluted state of the English language, “equitable” might have been spot on; however, today, variations of “equity” have so often been appropriated for Leftist purposes that their use is best avoided. (These purposes and resulting uses are often antithetical to earlier uses, e.g. by pushing equality of outcome over equality of opportunity.)
An interesting counterpart to the Linksstaat is Linksbeugung (another coined-by-me word), which, mapped on the word “Rechtsbeugung”, is a good description of the Leftist abuse of the justice system to achieve Leftist purposes contrary to the law, as with e.g. judicial-activist judges like Sonya Sotomayor and those who abuse the justice system through frivolous prosecution to achieve Leftist ends.
Rechtsbeugung, unlike the Rechtsstaat, is in and by itself something negative, the negative arising through “-beugung” (“bending”), implying a bending of the law. I am not aware of a corresponding English term, but a typical example would be a judge making a judgment contrary to any reasonable and/or established interpretation of the law in order to serve a personal agenda. (This differs from plain judicial activism in that the potential purposes are less limited and include favoring a personal friend/harming a personal enemy, “earning” a bribe, and similar—not just judicial activism.)
Linksbeugung, then, is Rechtsbeugung for a Leftist purpose or, in a literal translation of the word, a bending to the Left.
A potential weakness of the word “Linksbeugung” is that the negative meaning of “Rechtsbeugung” could lead to misunderstandings about the intent of “Linksbeugung”. In a comparison of some relevant terms:
A Linksanwalt is a lamentable special case of a Rechtsanwalt. He is a Rechtsanwalt gone wrong, but still someone who formally is a Rechtsanwalt, someone who (in U.S. terms) should be disbarred but has not been so. A Linksanwalt is something negative, while a Rechtsanwalt is something neutral.
A Linksstaat is antithetical to a Rechtsstaat. It can be a Rechtsstaat gone wrong, but it is not a special case of a Rechtsstaat. (To boot, cf. above, “Linksstaat” has a political angle that goes beyond a mere negation of Rechtsstaatlichkeit above.) A Linksstaat is something negative, while a Rechtsstaat is something positive.
However, note complications like the risk that a Linksstaat, e.g. today’s Germany, untruthfully claims to be a Rechtsstaat. In comparison with a Linksanwalt, this is more like someone disbarred claiming to still be a bar member, but the effect is similar to Linksanwalt-as-a-special-case-of-Rechtsanwalt, because there is no formal equivalent to a bar and because those too naive might be unable to see through the untruthful claims.
Linksbeugung is not just a special case of Rechtsbeugung but perfectly inline with the idea of Rechtsbeugung. Both are negative.