Everything which is not forbidden is allowed

File:Verboten cartoon Electrical Experimenter Feb 1919.png

A cartoon in Hugo Gernsback's Electrical Experimenter lampooning proposed regulations to make radio a monopoly of the US Navy.

"Everything which is not forbidden is allowed" is a constitutional principle of English law—an essential freedom of the ordinary citizen. The converse principle—"everything which is not allowed is forbidden"—applies to public authorities, whose actions are limited to the powers explicitly granted to them by law.

Totalitarian principle

Main article: Totalitarian principle

In The Once and Future King, author T. H. White proposed the opposite as the rule of totalitarianism: "Everything which is not forbidden is compulsory." This quote has been suggested as a principle of physics and has been used to describe totalitarian societies such as North Korea.

National traditions

The jocular saying is that, in England, "everything which is not forbidden is allowed", while, in Germany, the opposite applies, so "everything which is not allowed is forbidden". This may be extended to France—"everything is allowed even if it is forbidden"—and Russia where "everything is forbidden, even that which is expressly allowed". While in North Korea it is said that "everything that is not forbidden is compulsory"

The saying about the Germans is at least partially true. In discussion amongst German scholars of German Law an argument often found is that a juristic construction is not applicable since the law doesn't state its existence – even if the law doesn't explicitly state that the construction does not exist. An example for this is the Nebenbesitz (indirect possession of a right by more than one person), which is denied by German courts with the argument that §868 of the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, which defines indirect possession, doesn't say there could be two people possessing.

It should be noted that, in some languages (notably Scandinavian ones), the distinction between "must not" and "don't have to" is largely left for context to indicate (for example, Norwegian uses "må ikke" for both). This is however not the case in Swedish where "must not" is written "får inte" and "don't have to" is written "måste inte". This may well have implications for how different cultures perceive (and their legal traditions handle) the distinction between them, and between their opposites—"not forbidden" and "obligatory".

See also

• Nullum crimen, nulla poena sine praevia lege poenali
• Nulla poena sine lege
• Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution