> But like most things in a society, it works because people trust in it. Living under the rule of law makes me inclined to follow the rules because I know ever

> But like most things in a society, it works because people trust in it. Living under the rule of law makes me inclined to follow the rules because I know everyone else will play ball too, and those who try to gain an unfair advantage will be punished. I can't emphasize enough that rule of law isn't just having laws or having people respect the law. It's specifically about powerful people and what they can and can't do. Every battle we can point to fought over what we traditionally call rule of law has been about the relatively less powerful clawing freedom and opportunity away from the rich. If you look at it in this regard, it's easy to see that rule of law has only evolved and grown since the 1700s. There are ever more opportunities to climb the social ladder in ever more places. We've given women the vote, we've made good strides against racism. The Magna Carta mostly only protected rich landowners from the predations of the monarchy. Britain's battles concerned the ability to enter into contracts, freedom from arbitrary, executive-driven faux-judicial action. The kinds of shenanigans that kings pulled to keep people in line and fund its operation. The poor weren't concerned because they didn't have anything to take, no way to alienate the king. When I look at the battles these days, I see nothing but steady, constant progress in attempting to allow every person the opportunity to thrive. Much of what we think of as evil now was quite common in colonial times. Only the steady march of rule-of-law improvements eradicated such abuses. Another thing that a lot of people don't realize is that the Bill of Rights had very little judicial impact until civil rights movements forced the judiciary to actually consider that just having a democratically elected republican government is not enough to safeguard minority rights. The idea of minorities having inalienable rights would have been utterly strange in colonial Britain. One had exactly as much protection from the powerful as they could afford. Rule of law was progressive in implementation. First from the king to the nobility, then from the king and nobility to the merchant class, then finally to everyone through civil rights.