Rule Of Law Summary

1.2. IDEA OF RULE OF LAW

The rule of law does not have a specific and exact definition, and its meaning can be different between nations, legal traditions and people from all kinds of lifestyles, such as;

1. Aristotle defined that “The rule of law is better than that of any individual."

2. Lord Chief Justice Coke said that “The King himself ought not to be subject to man, but subject to God and the law, because the law makes him King".

3. The Secretary-General of the United Nations prescribes the rule of law as:

A rule of governance in which all persons, institutions and entities, public and private, including the State itself, are accountable to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced and independently adjudicated, and which

predominance of legal spirit

(i) Supremacy of law:

Explaining the first principle, Dicey states that rule of law means absolute supremacy or predominance of regular law as opposed to arbitrary powers or wide discretionary power. It excludes the existence of arbitrariness, of prerogative or even wide discretionary authority on part of the Government. According to him English men were ruled by the law and by the law alone.

The rule of law banning of rule of judge, in matters pertaining to a person or a nation. it is so imperative that the reign of law should not be reduced to anarchy by willfully lawless minority. in the other words, according to this doctrine, no man can be arrested, punished or be lawfully made to suffer in body or goods except by due process of law and for breach of law established in the ordinary legal manner before the ordinary Courts of the land.

(ii) Equality before

In many countries rights such as right to personal liberty, freedom from arrest, freedom to hold public meetings are guaranteed by a written constitution; in England, it is not so. Those rights are the result of judicial decisions in concrete cases which have actually arisen between the parties. The Constitution is not the source but the consequence of the rights of the individuals. Thus, dicey emphasized the role of the Courts of law as guarantors of liberty and suggested that the rights would be secured more adequately if they were enforceable in the Courts of law than by mere declaration of those rights in a document, as in the latter case, they can be ignored, curtailed or trampled