> "The individual" was not held, by those people who enacted those laws, or by the majority of people who voted for those people, to be above the rule of law.

> "The individual" was not held, by those people who enacted those laws, or by the majority of people who voted for those people, to be above the rule of law. Correct. And had individual rights been upheld we could have avoided the costly lessons and lives destroyed by those rights-trampling laws. > Nor was the individual held to be above the rule of law in Enlightenment thought. The theory of natural rights, which was central to the Enlightenment, held that the laws and governments were formed only to secure individual rights and could not be made to supersede them. A constitutional convention is voting on how to best uphold and respect those rights, not overrule them.