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He's... not wrong. But it's important to realize that rule of law is an Anglo legal and cultural invention. Rule by humans is the default, 'natural' way of orga

He's... not wrong. But it's important to realize that rule of law is an Anglo legal and cultural invention. Rule by humans is the default, 'natural' way of organizing human behavior, and innovations over that have to be iterated slowly. We simply cannot expect Western philosophical concepts, as great as they are, to simply be transplantable in other parts of the world just cuz it worked so great for us. Or does Mr. Weiwei expect the Chinese Communist Party to willfully give up power in order to put itself under a legal regime? Even Europe has moving slowly away from rule of law towards rule by international technocratic bureaucracy, borne out of the need to make a historically extremely heterogenous landmass peaceful. The UK was never going to be part of that tribe, it's fine with its rule of law.

barry-cotter 8y ago
> He's... not wrong. But it's important to realize that rule of law is an Anglo legal and cultural invention. And Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, German (speaking), Finnish, Latvian, Estonian at a minimum. The rule of law is very much not an Anglo thing. Outside North(Western) Europe where the rule of law absolutely was a thing you’d be pretty hard pressed to deny that it was never present in Iberia, particularly Aragon, Italy or the entirety of both Latin and Orthodox Christendom. Hell, the Ottoman Empire’s kanun law was based on... canon law. A government of laws, not men was an ideal dating back to Rome and indeed much earlier. But Christianity preserved Roman law. There were clearly areas that approached rule of law more and less closely but the idea that it’s an Anglo thing is historically ignorant to a ridiculous degree. How closely any particular state approached it varied a great deal, France and Hungary weren’t Prussia or Russia but they certainly weren’t England or Holland either. If you want to learn more about the various ways premodern societies ordered themselves Francis Fukuyama, Origins of Political Order, is a great place to start.
- vinceguidry 8y ago
  Having laws, is not the same thing as having the rule of law. Rule of law refers to something quite specific. That at the very precipice of organizing principles of society, the people at that precipice, are themselves governed by law. Rule of law means we don't have to worry about Trump turning America into a dictatorship. If you have to worry about your leaders running away with power, then you don't have rule of law. The idea that Germany, of all countries, has the rule of law is absolutely laughable. This is the country that started WW2 for lebensraum. Everything Hitler did was totally legal. But he still was an autocrat. This is because Germany did not have the rule of law. Maybe after WW2 Germany figured out how to make sure their leaders can't seize total political control. I'd have to go look. But there's no way under the sun they had it before.
  - barry-cotter 8y ago
    > The idea that Germany, of all countries, has the rule of law is absolutely laughable. This is the country that started WW2 for lebensraum. Everything Hitler did was totally legal. But he still was an autocrat. This is because Germany did not have the rule of law. I suggest you read more history and novels originally written in German from before the 1900s. The fact that Germany became a dictatorship is hardly dispositive of having the rule of law historically and generally. Germany, more than any other part of Europe was full of lawyers, and the law mattered to a great extent historically. The Holy Roman Empire was full of independent cities, free cities that had charters and were well aware of their rights and defended them and burghers who were keenly aware of the distinction between them and peasants and who engaged in self-rule in the same way as the Dutch did. The fact that it was the militaristic Prussian who unified Germany is a contingent fact. Even Prussia was absolutely a state governed by the rule of law. The Nazis coming to power no more shows that Germany did not have the rule of law than Andrew Jackson defying the Supreme Court to send the Five Civilised Tribes on the Trail of Tears does, or Lincoln suspending habeas corpus, or Roosevelt completely upending the constitutional order and ruling for four terms does. But at the most basic level, just read this and try and tell me with a straight face that the rule of law was not a German thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rechtsstaat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rechtsstaat > Rechtsstaat is a doctrine in continental European legal thinking, originating in German jurisprudence. It can be translated into English as "rule of law", alternatively "legal state", "state of law", "state of justice", "state of rights", or "state based on justice and integrity".[1] > A Rechtsstaat is a "constitutional state" in which the exercise of governmental power is constrained by the law,[2] and is often tied to the Anglo-American concept of the rule of law, but differs from it in that it also emphasizes what is just (i.e., a concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, religion, or equity). Thus it is the opposite of Obrigkeitsstaat or Nichtrechtsstaat (a state based on the arbitrary use of power),[3] and of Unrechtsstaat (a non-Rechtsstaat with the capacity to become one after a period of historical development).[4] > In a Rechtsstaat, the power of the state is limited in order to protect citizens from the arbitrary exercise of authority. The citizens share legally based civil liberties and can use the courts.
    - vinceguidry 8y ago

barry-cotter 8y ago

> He's... not wrong. But it's important to realize that rule of law is an Anglo legal and cultural invention. And Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, German (speaking), Finnish, Latvian, Estonian at a minimum. The rule of law is very much not an Anglo thing. Outside North(Western) Europe where the rule of law absolutely was a thing you’d be pretty hard pressed to deny that it was never present in Iberia, particularly Aragon, Italy or the entirety of both Latin and Orthodox Christendom. Hell, the Ottoman Empire’s kanun law was based on... canon law. A government of laws, not men was an ideal dating back to Rome and indeed much earlier. But Christianity preserved Roman law. There were clearly areas that approached rule of law more and less closely but the idea that it’s an Anglo thing is historically ignorant to a ridiculous degree. How closely any particular state approached it varied a great deal, France and Hungary weren’t Prussia or Russia but they certainly weren’t England or Holland either. If you want to learn more about the various ways premodern societies ordered themselves Francis Fukuyama, Origins of Political Order, is a great place to start.

vinceguidry 8y ago
Having laws, is not the same thing as having the rule of law. Rule of law refers to something quite specific. That at the very precipice of organizing principles of society, the people at that precipice, are themselves governed by law. Rule of law means we don't have to worry about Trump turning America into a dictatorship. If you have to worry about your leaders running away with power, then you don't have rule of law. The idea that Germany, of all countries, has the rule of law is absolutely laughable. This is the country that started WW2 for lebensraum. Everything Hitler did was totally legal. But he still was an autocrat. This is because Germany did not have the rule of law. Maybe after WW2 Germany figured out how to make sure their leaders can't seize total political control. I'd have to go look. But there's no way under the sun they had it before.
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  > The idea that Germany, of all countries, has the rule of law is absolutely laughable. This is the country that started WW2 for lebensraum. Everything Hitler did was totally legal. But he still was an autocrat. This is because Germany did not have the rule of law. I suggest you read more history and novels originally written in German from before the 1900s. The fact that Germany became a dictatorship is hardly dispositive of having the rule of law historically and generally. Germany, more than any other part of Europe was full of lawyers, and the law mattered to a great extent historically. The Holy Roman Empire was full of independent cities, free cities that had charters and were well aware of their rights and defended them and burghers who were keenly aware of the distinction between them and peasants and who engaged in self-rule in the same way as the Dutch did. The fact that it was the militaristic Prussian who unified Germany is a contingent fact. Even Prussia was absolutely a state governed by the rule of law. The Nazis coming to power no more shows that Germany did not have the rule of law than Andrew Jackson defying the Supreme Court to send the Five Civilised Tribes on the Trail of Tears does, or Lincoln suspending habeas corpus, or Roosevelt completely upending the constitutional order and ruling for four terms does. But at the most basic level, just read this and try and tell me with a straight face that the rule of law was not a German thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rechtsstaat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rechtsstaat > Rechtsstaat is a doctrine in continental European legal thinking, originating in German jurisprudence. It can be translated into English as "rule of law", alternatively "legal state", "state of law", "state of justice", "state of rights", or "state based on justice and integrity".[1] > A Rechtsstaat is a "constitutional state" in which the exercise of governmental power is constrained by the law,[2] and is often tied to the Anglo-American concept of the rule of law, but differs from it in that it also emphasizes what is just (i.e., a concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, religion, or equity). Thus it is the opposite of Obrigkeitsstaat or Nichtrechtsstaat (a state based on the arbitrary use of power),[3] and of Unrechtsstaat (a non-Rechtsstaat with the capacity to become one after a period of historical development).[4] > In a Rechtsstaat, the power of the state is limited in order to protect citizens from the arbitrary exercise of authority. The citizens share legally based civil liberties and can use the courts.
  - vinceguidry 8y ago