  Habermas (1996b, chap. 3) understands these rights of liberty and political participation as an abstract system of basic rights generated by reflection on the nature of discursive legitimation (articulated in the D-Principle) in contexts shaped by the functional demands on modern law (or the “form” of positive law). Because these rights are abstract, each polity must further interpret and flesh them out for its particular historical circumstances, perhaps supplementing them with further welfare and environmental rights. In any case, the system of rights constitutes a minimum set of normative institutional conditions for any legitimate modern political order. The system of rights, in other words, articulates the normative framework for constitutional democracies, within which further institutional mechanisms such as legislatures and other branches of government must operate.