Rechtsstaat (German: Rechtsstaat) is a concept in continental European legal thinking, originally borrowed from German jurisprudence, which can be translated as "legal state", "state of law", "state of justice", or "state of rights". It is a "constitutional state" in which the exercise of governmental power is constrained by the law, and is often tied to the Anglo-American concept of the rule of law.

In a Rechtsstaat, the power of the state is limited in order to protect citizens from the arbitrary exercise of authority. In a Rechtsstaat the citizens share legally based civil liberties and they can use the courts. A country cannot be a liberal democracy without first being a Rechtsstaat.

German writers usually place Immanuel Kant's theories at the beginning of their accounts of the movement toward the Rechtsstaat. The Rechtsstaat in the meaning of "constitutional state" was introduced in the latest works of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) after US and French constitutions were adopted in the late 18th century. Kant’s approach is based on the supremacy of a country’s written constitution. This supremacy must create guarantees for implementation of his central idea: a permanent peaceful life as a basic condition for the happiness of its people and their prosperity. Kant was basing his doctrine on none other but constitutionalism and constitutional government. Kant had thus formulated the main problem of constitutionalism: "The constitution of a state is eventually based on the morals of its citizens, which, in its turn, is based on the goodness of this constitution."

De Staat is a Dutch alternative rock band, formed in Nijmegen in 2006.

De Staat were started as a one man project by leadsinger, Torre Florim, who later brought the band together. Their first demo was made in 2007 and recorded in Florim's apartment. Before they were even signed they were already a full grown band, because of their well received live performances in the Netherlands. They were also the supporting act of the popular Belgium band dEUS. De Staat were signed by Excelsior Recordings in 2008 and they released their debut album Wait for Evolution early in 2009, all the songs were written and produced by Torre Florim. He wrote the album as a graduating project for a "Music Production" course. Not only did Florim produce his own album, he also produced the debut album EP of another Dutch band Go Back To The Zoo in 2008. Within a year De Staat's popularity rose and they were performing at festivals such as Dot to Dot,Glastonbury,Sziget and Lowlands. When they performed at Lowlands, they were spotted by Chris Goss, a music producer. Goss introduced them to Mascot Records, which released Wait for Evolution internationally in the spring of 2010. After their international debut, they toured extensively. Machinery the band’s second album was released in 2011.

Peter Fuchs (1829–1889) was a German sculptor.

From 1844 to 1849 Peter Fuchs was an apprentice mason in the Cologne Dombauhütte and for the next two years he worked as a mason for St. Nicolai in Hamburg and in the studio of Vincenz Statz in Cologne.

From 1851 to 1854 he worked in Speyer with the sculptor Gottfried Renn (1818–1880) and in Frankfurt am Main with Eduard Schmidt von der Launitz (1797–1869) and Eduard Jakob von Steinle.

In 1855 Peter Fuchs returned to Cologne, where he created such large sandstone reliefs and statue groups as the Four Prophets (1858) for the Mariensäule in the Gereonsdriesch and the life-size figures of SS Dionysius and Reinold (1866–1871) for the west front of St. Mauritius.

From 1865 to 1881 he produced some 700 life-size and slightly over-life-size sculptures for Cologne Cathedral, mostly reliefs and seated and standing figures depicting scenes from the Bible and lives of the saints. Many of these are to be found on the columns and walls of the south transept (1866–1872), the west towers (1871), the west front and the north front (1879–1881) and the Petersportal (1881). Several preliminary drawings (1879–1880) for uncompleted sculptures are located in the Dombauarchiv.