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So at what point in time do you believe that the English implemented rule of law fully and never went back? Honestly your argument seem quite hand-wavy. How wo

• vinceguidry 11y ago
  As with all such developments, it was a gradual process. The English fought with their monarchs for hundreds of years, culminating in the Magna Carta, which was the turning point in the political struggle. Being a charter, it had to be renewed every year. With an actual document to rally around, the English nobility came to expect it would be ratified by each new king and so they each dutifully did at the beginning of their reigns. Eventually a mythic cult-like element came to surround the charter, and the idea of its repeal seemed more and more remote. The monarchy lost successively more and more powers and today mostly serves as a cultural symbol. > How would you precisely define rule-of-law in such a way that you can judge if a particular system is rule-of-law or not? The main lesson I learned studying history is that it's messy. Concepts take a lot of time to emerge. Eventually you have to stop calling something by one term and start calling it by another, otherwise important meaning gets lost. The Romans were really good at peaceful transfer of power, among other civic traditions. To easily refer to how they differed in that regard from the British Empire, the term at hand is 'rule of law'. The key idea of rule of law is that it's law that functions as the force guiding human action, not humans guiding themselves. What I see is that once rule of law is settled, the power struggles happen along other lines. People agree that the acceptable way to answer the question of "who should be the ruler?" isn't to go raise an army and go fight a war against your brother. So they fight about other things, like "how much and who can I tax?" Once the whole society says, "no more dictatorial kings", then you have that important part of rule of law handled and you can move on to other aspects. Now you have societies that never fully developed the bulwarks against tyranny that England did. They can be peaceful for awhile but at a bad moment devolve into totalitarianism. You could argue that it could happen in the UK, but the more you read about the history, the more laughable it looks. You could, with a large enough military, conquer the UK from the outside. Subvert its democracy from the inside? Never gonna happen. Attempting a coup in any state, especially a modern one, is not the work of one man, but is an act of violence against the entire legal and political system. The UK has the most robust laws and procedures of anywhere that decide what happens. If you slaughtered all of Parliament, they'd kill you and then go about electing a new one. Anything you'd try to subvert the UK political process would be met with an appropriate response by the appropriate people whose job it is is to protect the political process. It's the combination of all these factors that makes for rule of law. All these factors are required to protect a people from the people that hold power over them.
  • olavk 11y ago
    You are not really explaining by which definition England was rule-of-law (and even invented the concept) but medieval Iceland was not. I chose medieval Iceland and republican Rome as examples because they are systems which doesn't have a king at all, which make the rule-of-law more obvious.
    • vinceguidry 11y ago
      Rule of law is rule according to laws, not by people. It's about the relationship between the state and the nation. If your system of laws is so weak that you can have such internal strife that a little bit of pressure from another country's king is all it takes to annex you, you don't have rule of law. Your civic institutions are supposed to be able to prevent these kinds of circumstances. It's the whole reason they're there, the primary role of the state is to protect you from other states. So far we've identified these criteria, in order of evolution: a) A tradition of civic participation b) A strong state c) Traditions and rules that prevent would-be tyrants from subverting civic institutions d) Leadership that respects limits on power defined not by him, but by the nation D arises out of the first three, if d fails to happen, then you didn't have a-c. Republican Rome lacked c and therefore d. A and b protected them for awhile, but the tradition wasn't strong enough to prevent devolution into tyranny. Iceland lacked b, so even having direct democracy isn't really enough. You have to have both a and b before it makes any sense to have c. Small states where everyone knows everyone else are bound by stronger ties than law. You have decision-making processes rather than machinery of state. Rule of law protects the weak from the predations of the strong, if you don't need it, then those institutions won't have a chance to become resilient through constant testing. The first serious challenge to your nascent state will cause it to crumble, as happened in Iceland. States today tend to have b without a.
      • olavk 11y ago
        Then Oliver Cromwell shows that England didn't have rule of law.
        • 11y ago