Rule by Law definition
Rule by Law means the opposite. It refers to a police state in which government invokes the law (indeed creates law) to ‘justify’ excessive use of government force. Detention without trial laws are common examples of these, and legislation enacted pursuant to the post-9/11 ‘war on terrorism’ is a more contemporary (yet equally notorious) example.
Rule by Law also means that the judiciary is not as independent a body as it should be; the courts become part of the political struggle and often pass politically motivated sentences. Unfortunately, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine has always been a pawn in elite power struggles. That two-thirds of the constitutional judges are appointed by the President and Parliament led to attempts by some politicians to influence the com- position of the Constitutional Court to their own advantage. Before 2004 this was man- ifest, for instance, when the Constitutional Court allowed President Leonid Kuchma to run for a third term (Pleines, 2007a).
Rule by Law refers to law as a means through which a state conducts action.38 Hence, power is exercised through the utilization of positive law.39 For example a government acting through law; via the enactment of laws and abiding by its laws. Yet, legal limitations on the government are required otherwise one could substitute this narrow definition of the rule of law with the term ‘rule by the government’.40 A rule of law even in its narrow definition should not be equated with the rule by a power holder; this would be contradictory to the main purpose emerging from the historical development of the concept. Hence, law must be the tool of action, as well as supplementary being supreme and limiting the power holder.
Examples of Rule by Law in a sentence
This key idea is encapsulated by a quote from ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ and ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ in Rule by Law where they summarize the findings of ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ in his chapter covering the use of courts during military rule in the late 20th century in the countries of Argentina, Brazil, and Chile: “Where courts showed deference to the regime, political cases were routed through the regular judiciary and repression was therefore routinized and somewhat domesticated.
More Definitions of Rule by Law
Rule by Law is the means by which the state conducts its affairs; whatever the government does it should be done by laws. Therefore, the rule of law is the rule by the government. In this sense all modern state has the rule of law. It has scarce connotation to the limits of the government’s powers as a principium sine qua non.