What exactly does that mean? I’ve heard many people state this*. Does ‘rule’ mean like the rule of a king, as a king might rule over a kingdom. Or does it mean a rule like don’t run in the halls. I’m sure I could google up the meaning, but it is something that seems better to speculate on as the answer is surely a disappointment.
Many people in various forms have stated yes that person did the right thing, saved several children from a horrible death and harmed no one in the process and committed no wrong, and got 5 orphaned puppies adopted, but we have the rule of law and he must be punished. Who is the tyrannical king who rules over us named law and why don’t we overthrow him.
My apologies, and please accept my patriarchal upbringing, a upbringing where one is taught to use the masculine if the gender is unknown, I fully accept law may be female and thus a queen and her rule.
“Rule of Law” means that we don’t have to bribe, or have the bigger fists, or the bigger guns, to get what we want. If someone wrongs you, you can take them to court. The great equalizer. You don’t have to just suck it up (or shoot them). People respect the court’s decisions. It has weight.
Russia pretty much doesn’t have the rule of law. Oh, they have laws, and procedures, but they just aren’t reliable.
For a handy example, the president wanted his “non-muslim” ban. The courts said it wasn’t constitutional. The president cried and pouted and blustered, but the court’s decision won out. THAT is rule of law.
Occasionally the law is a ass, and so we do our best to minimize those instances - which I suppose is why the law is so damn complicated, i.e. we’ve tried hard to make so that unfortunate individuals don’t get ground up in the gears. Thus we insist that accused parties have the right to a trial that tries to sort out what the facts are, and (if found guilty) maybe another trial to determine an appropriate punishment. The alternative is lynching by angry mobs, who often aren’t as concerned as they ought to be about what the actual facts of the case are.
On those rare occasions when someone does get caught in the gears, well, that’s why we have things like pardons, commutations, and jury nullification, any of which would serve to protect the heroic individual you described.
The rule of law protects us from misguided passions (e.g. revenge killing) and/or shortsighted judgment (e.g. fire safety codes, as the occupants and owners of the Ghost Ship found out); thus it’s generally favored over anarchy.
Sort of. A king being an early form of “rule of law” in these sense that he creates and enforces the law of the land and has a formal process for succession. But “rule of law” more generally means there is a codified set of rules that the people are expected to follow and a set of prescribed punishments for violating them. The alternative in this case being a sort of might makes right anarchy or some sort of tribalism.
Rule of law means simply that society has organized, documented procedures that determine fairness. This is compared to a society in which rulers and their subordinates may make capricious decisions, regardless of whether there’s a written rule that forbids or compels something.
Since I don’t have a damn clue what that puppy abuse comment means, let’s take a specific example. You go into a store and buy a candy bar. You give the clerk $5, get your change, eat your junk food and go home. Suddenly, the police are at your door. “You stole from the store!” they yell. “Empty your pockets!”
You empty your pockets and only then discover that for change, the clerk gave you three ones and a hundred dollar bill.
In a society that lives under the rule of law, the law would dictate with some precision whether or not you committed a crime. In the US, you did not, because you did not have a guilty state of mind when you walked away with $103, instead of the $4 in change you were owed. Since we rely on the law in this case, you did nothing wrong, and in theory, everyone who did what you did would also go free.
In societies that are not run by the rule of law, the police may be totally within their rights to determine if you should go to jail or not, and different police officers would almost certainly make their own decisions on whether to send you to jail or not.
Depends on the type of king. If an absolute monarch who can make arbitrary commands at a whim and compel obedience, there is no rule of law (even if he is a “good king” and his commands are all benevolent).
Rule of law means that the monarch is also subject to the law. That doesn’t mean that the law doesn’t give the monarch special privileges, just that it is the law giving those privileges to him, rather than having the monarch be “above the law”.
I realize that this is hyperbole, but if there were ever a case like this, there would be immediate outcry to change the law, which people can do in a democracy.
But generally, to me, the rule of law means that nobody is exempt from the law because of how rich, how strong, or how noble they are.
An example of a country where the rule of law is mostly absent is Saudi Arabia.
Note the end of the intro section in the link:
In theory based on Sharia Law but not codified. So judges have quite a bit of room on interpreting things. Of course bribery prevails. Some attempts at create a set of actual laws as we know it in recent years but those seem to have generally failed.
It has all sorts of weirdness. Your status as a foreigner visiting the country is quite atypical. You have essentially no rights.
Right. It’s the codification of those rules that defines “rule of law”. As opposed to the whim of the monarch, or even “what’s understood” as the law. It doesn’t really speak to the quality or benevolence of those laws (which, in the past, include slavery). Just their consistency.
The Code of Hammurabi in Mesopotamia was one of the first examples of a king putting in writing (stone in this case) what the actual laws were, so people knew to follow them.
In laymen’s terms, the rule of law means that the players in the market place can know what to expect. The laws are the boundaries in which we can expect players to abide within, and if they don’t then there are mechanisms to insure they do or that wronged parties can be compensated.
Without rule of law, outcomes would be too unpredictable, and the level of risk may be to great for players in the market to participate.
It’s the difference between “I say so” (person - King, President, etc.) and “This paper says so” (law). Persons change, persons change their minds, persons are subject to prejudice and influence, what is written on paper does not.
Theoretically, of course - yes there are mechanisms to change what is on the paper. But until the change is made, whatever is on the paper is “Law” until changed.
There is also the puzzle of humans interpreting what is on the paper, hence the Judges and Courts, so Persons again (dang, how did they sneak back in there?!?)
It’s like Saddam or Trump saying ‘bring that piece of ass to my room at 10’, and someone saying ‘can’t do that, it’s against the law’. The law rules over everyone.
You want to ban muslims - sure, but it must comply with the existing law because the law rules us all.
Imperfect, illegal, or ambiguous laws sometimes make it onto the books, and so judges and courts are occasionally required to review these laws and clarify or erase them. A lot of effort and checking and double-checking and triple-checking, on up to supreme-court checking, goes on to ensure that we’ve tried our best to come up with laws that are fair and beneficial to society as a whole while minimizing the frequency with which individuals get screwed over. The concept of legal precedent comes into play here, particularly WRT the idea of predictability described by Omar Little: we try to be very careful about setting legal precedent to make sure it’s a good one, and then we try hard to follow legal precedents on the assumption that they are good ones. CGP Grey had a good video about this (can’t find it right now), describing legal precedents as foundational bricks in a wall of laws: you do your damnedest to make sure they’re good ones, because the rest of the legal system is built on them.