The Rule of Law

Recognising a dissemblance

The expression ‘rule of law’ is regularly appropriated by those pushing socialist agendas. They do this for two reasons: firstly, to claim legitimacy for concepts averse to freedom, and secondly, to weaken the concept of the rule of law itself by rendering it...

Due process of law

The rule of law requires that the due process of the law be respected. However, before this can be done it must first be understood what ‘due process’ is. In this regard there has been great confusion, particularly in the United States. True due process The due...

Obedience to the law before orders

Let this be the distinctive mark of an American that in cases of commotion, he enlists himself under no man’s banner, inquires for no man’s name, but repairs to the standard of the laws. Do this, and you need never fear anarchy or tyranny. Your government will be...

Corruption must not be tolerated

Corruption destroys liberty The immense briberies practised by Julius Caesar were sure and terrible presages of Caesar’s tyranny. It is amazing what mighty sums he gave away: Caius Curio alone, one of the tribunes, was bought into his interest, at no smaller a price...

Separation of powers

In the government of this commonwealth, the legislative department shall never exercise the executive and judicial powers or either of them: the executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them: the judicial shall never exercise...

Law-making should be subject to law

Constitution The act of law-making itself must be governed by a higher law—a written constitution. Manner and form of passing laws A written constitution should prescribe the mechanism for passing laws. That process must provide for multiple readings, publicity,...

Courts should enforce the law cheaply

Who is there that has not paid unjust demands rather than withstand the threat of an action? This man can point to property that has been alienated from his family from lack of funds or courage to fight for it. That man can name several relations ruined by a lawsuit....

Laws should be enforced

Laws not executed are worse than none, and only teach men to despise law: whereas reverence and obedience go together. —Thomas Gordon. Cato’s Letters No. 57, Of false honour, public and private, Saturday, December 16, 1721. Unwanted laws should be removed from the...

Laws should be easy to find

Crimes will be less frequent in proportion as the code of laws is more universally read and understood. —Cesare Beccaria. Of Crimes and Punishments, 1764. The whole body of statute law should follow a theme which makes finding the law intuitive. To this end the people...

Laws should be simple

Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding, and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties, which may make anything mean everything or nothing, at pleasure. —Thomas...

Laws should not be ambiguous

Laws should be clearly written so they are capable of only one interpretation. Ambiguities should be removed where they prove persistent or force judges into contortions destructive of the principle of literal statutory interpretation.

Laws should not constantly change

Laws should be drafted so they can serve for extended periods. Settled laws, which have been bedded down by a body of case law, should not be lightly altered. Every time the law is altered, the long-term planning of lives and businesses is disrupted. It can take...

Laws should never be retrospective

The sentiment that ex post facto laws are against natural rights is so strong in the United States, that few, if any, of the State constitutions have failed to proscribe them. The federal constitution indeed interdicts them in criminal cases only; but they are equally...

Laws should be known beforehand

For all the power the Government has being only for the good of society, as it ought not to be arbitrary and at pleasure, so it ought to be exercised by established and promulgated laws; that both the people may know their duty, and be safe and secure within the...

Judicial discretion

The judgments ought to be fixed, and to such a degree, as to be always conformable to the exact letter of the law. Were they to be the private opinion of the judge, people would then live in a society without knowing exactly the obligation it lays them under....

Discretion leads to corruption

It is discretion alone that is responsible for corruption. A local government official cannot take a bribe from a developer if he has no discretion to determine the outcome. The same holds true for the immigration official, the mayor, the procurement officer, and the...

Bureaucracy

When a law grants discretion to public servants, it is always harmful. Wishful thinking is attracted to the idea of officials having discretion to ‘decide what is best in the circumstances.’ It conjures up images of a benevolent Solomon fairly and appropriately...

Pardons

The chief safeguard is that the rules must apply to those who lay them down and those who apply them—that is, to the government as well as the governed—and that nobody has the power to grant exceptions. —Friedrich Hayek. The Constitution of Liberty, 1960. The power to...

Administering the bureaucracy

It is evident that not all the acts of government can be bound by fixed rules and that at every stage of the governmental hierarchy considerable discretion must be granted to the subordinate agencies. So long as the government administers its own resources, there are...

Discretion is the root of tyranny

That constitution which trusts more than it needs to any man, or body of men, has a terrible flaw in it, and is big with the seeds of its own destruction. Hence arose tyrants, and tyranny, and standing armies: Marius, and Caesar, and Oliver Cromwell. How...

Equality before the law

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal —The Declaration of Independence America’s Founding Fathers were referring to the natural law; that each of us, from the citadel of our minds, looks out upon the world with the same consciousness,...

Laws should not be made by decree

The nature of man is so frail, that wheresoever the word of a single person has had the force of a law, the innumerable extravagances and mischiefs it has produced have been so notorious, that all nations who are not stupid, slavish and brutish, have always abominated...

The Rule of Law

Freedom of men under government is, to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, where the rule prescribes not; and not to be subject to the...