Article 20 [Basic institutional principles; defense of the constitutional order]

(1) The Federal Republic of Germany is a democratic and social federal state.

(2) All state authority is derived from the people. It shall be exercised by the people through elections and other votes and through specific legislative, executive, and judicial bodies.

(3) The legislature shall be bound by the constitutional order, the executive and the judiciary by law and justice.

(4) All Germans shall have the right to resist any person seeking to abolish this constitutional order, if no other remedy is available.

The German government claims that a "4th paragraph" was added to Article 20 in 1968 which says, "All Germans shall have the right to resist any person seeking to abolish this constitutional order, should no other remedy be possible." However this provision is (according to the common opinion of lawyers) not protected by the eternity clause, because it was not included in this Basic Law as originally enacted. Most lawyers claim (though with basis in philosophy of law rather than in this Basic Law) that the amending legislator has no power to enlarge the eternity clause, but at any rate the words "article 20" as appearing in article 79 mean "article 20 as in force at the time article 79 was enacted," and the amending legislator did not in any way reveal an intention to put the right of resistance under the eternity clause. (That is, not by force of this Basic Law itself. If it be argued that the right to resist an illegitimate government is of natural law, then as such it would be included in the words of Article 1 paragraph 2 as given above.)