Everything which is not forbidden is allowed

In discussion of German law, an argument often found is that a juristic construction is not applicable since the law does not state its existence – even if the law does not 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 Civil Code, which defines indirect possession, does not say there could be two people possessing. However, the German constitution Art. 2(1) protects the general freedom to act (Allgemeine Handlungsfreiheit), as demonstrated e.g. by the judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court known as Reiten im Walde (BVerfGE 80, 137; lit. "riding in the forest").[5]

In the United Kingdom, the Ram Doctrine is a former constitutional doctrine based upon a 1945 memorandum by Granville Ram. Part of it reads:

A Minister of the Crown is not in the same position as a statutory corporation. A statutory corporation (whether constituted by a special statute as, for instance, a railway company is, or constituted under the Companies Acts as in the case of an ordinary company) is entirely a creature of statute and has no powers except those conferred upon it by or under statute, but a Minister of the Crown, even though there may have been a statute authorising his appointment, is not a creature of statute and may, as an agent of the Crown, exercise any powers which the Crown has power to exercise, except so far as he is precluded from doing so by statute. In other words, in the case of a Government Department, one must look at the statutes to see what it may not do, not as in the case of a company to see what it may do.[6]

The doctrine is also mentioned in Halsbury's Laws of England (though not explicitly by name)[7] and the Cabinet Manual.[8]

In R v Secretary of State for Health, ex parte C [2000] 1 FLR 627, it was found that despite the fact the Department of Health (as it was then known) that had no statutory authority to maintain an unpublished but consulted (by employers in the child care field) database, it was not unlawful for it do so.

De Smith's Judicial Review is critical of the doctrine[9] and a 2013 House of Lords Constitution Committee report suggests that Ram's memorandum is not an accurate depiction of the law today and that the phrase "the Ram doctrine" is inaccurate and should no longer be used.[9]

The converse principle—"everything which is not allowed is forbidden"—used to apply to public authorities in England, whose actions were limited to the powers explicitly granted to them by law.[10] The restrictions on local authorities were lifted by the Localism Act 2011 which granted a "general power of competence" to local authorities.[11]

In March 2021, in response to the Coronavirus disease 2019, the Health Secretary Matt Hancock reportedly advised the Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the following terms: "We've got to tell people that they can't do anything unless it is explicitly allowed by law."[12] This advice has been described a "radical suggestion", and Hancock himself reportedly described it as Napoleonic, "flipping" British tradition, because in lockdown people would be forbidden from doing anything unless the legislation said, in terms, that they could.[12] Whilst the foregoing is merely reported, the Coronavirus Act 2020[13] and hundreds of pieces of subordinate legislation made pursuant to that Act[14] prima facie abrogated the principle in the United Kingdom, and this has been confirmed by other writers including Adam Wagner,[15] a barrister specialising in human rights and public law.[16] Lord Sumption, a former judge of the Supreme Court, stated in a lecture given on 27 October 2020 that "The ease with which people could be terrorized into surrendering basic freedoms which are fundamental to our existence as social beings came as a shock to me in March 2020".[17]

In the US, similar restrictions on municipal authorities apply as a consequence of Dillon's rule.