the intangible public opinion as safeguard of the rechtsstaat in George Orwell’s book 1984, but responsible for spreading correct information, in the battle against fake news? Do we need censorship to stop spreading fake news? Facebook already has a whole division of people fighting daily against fake, manipulated or just sickening messages. Twitter first put warning messages under Trump’s questionable tweets and then decided to ban him from their platform. This in its turn raised a lot of criticism: can a private company just mute the president of the USA? It is clear: the new media have not only created many possibilities, but also many challenges that need to be addressed in the future. As lawyers, we tend to focus solely on the legal aspects of the Rechtsstaat: democracy and free elections, an independent judiciary, the rule of law, etc. However, the Rechtsstaat does not operate in a vacuum. The Rechtsstaat is a living organism that needs to be protected, maintained and upheld on a daily basis. It is made by and for the people. Therefore, their (public) opinion matters. As this article has tried to demonstrate, it is even indispensable as a safeguard for the Rechtsstaat. The history of the Rechtsstaat is interwoven with the history of public opinion. The Enlightenment ideas that constitute the fundaments of the Rechtsstaat (democracy, rule of law, separation of power) spread and developed in the emerging enlightened public opinion of the 18th Century. When revolutionaries turned these ideas into reality, they reserved an important place for the public opinion as safeguard of the Rechtsstaat. Freedom of the press is a necessity to form a healthy public opinion. Therefore, the history of public opinion is not only linked to the history of the Rechtsstaat, but also to the history of the press, from the first journals to contemporary social media. There are many examples where the press, as mouthpiece of public opinion, has played its role of watchdog of the Rechtsstaat. In the new millennium however, the decline of the traditional media and the rise of social media seem to undermine this ancient safeguard. 76 Conclusion
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