The article presents a novel interpretation of the work of Friedrich Julius Stahl and the role it has played in the genesis of modern public law. Stahl is a pivotal figure in the jurisprudence of the 19th century, being the most important state thinker and one of the most important philosophers of law of that century. The article shows how Stahl dissociates public law from natural law and how, in doing so, he introduces a new conception of freedom into constitutional doctrine; a conception which is not tied to the individual, but to the nation.