Beyond the Hand-Wavy Version of the Rule of Law

The rule of law, as opposed to the rule of men, is believed to be the best way to avoid oppression and rights violations, and rightly so. However, the rule of law, in a superficial definition of the concept, can be just as bad as lawless oppression, because a law can allow or even force people to violate rights and to harm people in such a way that they are no longer free. Governments can and often do use laws for the purpose of domination.

So, the rule of law may be no more than a cover for and an expression of the rule of man over man. Many a dictatorship tries to give the impression of respecting the rule of law by functioning according to laws and by using laws to oppress people. In fact, this isn’t completely foreign to democracies either. Think of anti-terrorism legislation and other oppressive laws that often have wide popular support (anti-same-sex marriage laws). Respect for the law is clearly not enough. The rule of law must be something more than that if it’s not to be an empty phrase.

But what should it be then? To start with, the rule of law can’t exist without a separation of powers. That seems to be a prerequisite. Laws need to be enforced against those who abuse power, and for this reason we need a locus within power strong enough to correct power.  But a separation of powers – no matter how well it functions – it’s not enough either. If there is no higher law that protects human rights, then judicial courts can’t invalidate oppressive laws or laws that violate human rights.

There is only one solution to this problem. The rule of law has to be more than a merely formal or procedural concept. Some requirements on the level of the content of the laws that are supposed to rule are necessary. We have to define the words “law” and “rule of law” in a very specific way and enforce respect for this definition by way of judicial verdicts, otherwise the rule of law will be no more than the rule of men disguised as the rule of law.

What should this definition be? Laws must be compatible with human rights – in the sense of neither allowing nor creating rights violations – and they must be equal for all. Certain more formal or procedural rules will indeed be helpful to increase the probability that we end up with laws like that, but they won’t be enough. It’s probably best, although not absolutely necessary, to have laws voted by the people or by representatives of the people (it’s unlikely that the people will accept laws that violate their rights). And laws must be reviewed by independent judges on the basis of the human rights contained in the constitution. A second legislative chamber confirming or, as the case may be, vetoing acts of legislation, may also be helpful. These are procedural rules instituting the separation of powers.

In a democracy, a law is voted by the representatives of the people and the people can always elect other legislators if they believe that their current legislators vote laws that harm their rights. This is not, of course, a solution for the minority. The majority can still vote or approve laws that oppress the minority. That is why a law must also be compatible with human rights as they are included in the constitution. The law, even if it is accepted or voted by the majority of the people, can’t be everything this majority may desire. In order to enforce the conformity between laws and the rights of the constitution, we need a separation of powers. Minorities should be able to use judicial review, and in addition could be given some kind of privileged representation in a second parliamentary chamber.

A system that enforces rules and prohibitions by way of laws, but lacks one or several of the requirements I’ve listed above, will have a hard time respecting the rule of law. The rule of law is not the rule of any law, but the rule of a certain type of law. Any other definition is devoid of meaning.

What Are Human Rights? (56): Protection Against the State, and Something More

In our current, non-anarchist world, human rights depend on the state for their protection. Judicial courts, the police force and political institutions such as the welfare state and democratic governance are requirements for rights realization. Perhaps in some future state of affairs that will no longer be the case, but presently it is. Which means that human rights are more than just protective tools directed against the power of the state. They are part of the state. Or better they should be. “That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men” says the Declaration of Independence of 1776. The state should protect its citizens against its own abuses of power (and of course also against the exercise of illegitimate power by fellow citizens, but that’s a topic for another time).

Many if not most violations of human rights are caused by state actions, even when the state in question is relatively benevolent. Power corrupts, and that is why we need rights to limit power. However, without power, rights are useless. Human rights limit the actions of the state, determine what a state is not allowed to do or should refrain from doing, and define those areas where the state is not allowed to interfere. But human rights also, and positively, determine what the state should do. They demand positive action and interference from the state.

For example: the state should not only avoid torturing its citizens, it should also actively protect and help those citizens who are tortured, most commonly by some part of the state but perhaps also by fellow citizens. This means that abstention and forbearance on the part of the state, no matter how important, are not enough. The state also has a duty to act in order to protect rights. And if human rights require that the state abstains, then the state should be actively engaged in enforcing its own abstention. (Needless to say that this implies a separation of powers).

This active engagement can even go one step further. Human rights sometimes require more than actively enforced abstention. What is true for torture is also true for economic rights: the state should not only avoid creating or maintaining poverty but also try to create a minimum amount of prosperity for all. A right not to suffer poverty is an example of a right that requires the obtention of something (although it can also require abstention as in the case of Mao’s Great Leap Forward). Here we’re dealing with so-called positive rights as opposed to negative rights. (In French they call it ”le droit à l’obtention et à l’exigence” as opposed to “le droit à la résistance et à la défense”).Whether you like it or not, the state is often one of the parties that should assist people in obtaining what they have a right to, at least on the condition that there’s no other, less invasive means of obtention.

But let’s not put too much emphasis on this distinction between abstention and obtention, or between negative and positive rights. Every human right, including those rights that seem to demand only the absence of state action, require state action, for example action in the form of a judgement of a court of justice concerning an illegal state action, and the police measures enforcing this kind of judgement. The state should commit, as well as omit; prevent, provide, protect and engender, as well as forbear; and it’s not at all obvious that particular types of human rights systematically need more of one or the other type of state conduct.

Something merely negative, such as abstention, forbearance or a limited state, can never constitute a state, as Hannah Arendt has rightly stressed in “On Revolution”. There is a reason for having a state.

Human rights, particularly in the early stages of their historical development, were considered as primarily directed against the state. This was also the main cause of their initial success. The theory of anti-state rights was inherent in the idea of human rights as natural rights. Natural rights, as opposed to legal rights, are not given by the state and can be used by citizens as an instrument of defense against the state.

However, none of this should make us forget that there is something inherently positive in the state and that rights can’t be entirely “natural”, whatever that means, at least not if we want them to be real and enforceable. As things are in our day and age, it’s often the state and its legal rights that protect us against violations of our human rights, at least ideally and more commonly when the state is a democracy. It does this, not only by passively abstaining, but also by actively doing something.

More posts in this series are here.

What is Democracy? (60): Is Separation of Powers Compatible With All Types of Democracy?

OK, that question is probably way too ambitious for a blogpost. There are dozens of types of democracy, so let’s just look at two types: presidential democracy and parliamentary democracy (PrD and PaD for short in what remains). And that means not only limiting the scope of the investigation but also simplifying it: there are many different types of PrD or PaD (the Westminster model is one form of PaD, the US system is one form of PrD). But that’s what you have to do if you want to keep your blogposts relatively short and readable.

Moreover, separation of powers is an enormously complex topic as well, so again I’ll have to simplify. I’ll focus on two of the three powers that are traditionally distinguished: the executive and the legislative powers and ask how separation between these two powers is compatible with PrD and PaD.

First, why is separation between these two powers an important value? For the same reason that separation of powers in general is important: to create checks and balances and to pit different powers of the state against each other so that there is less risk of tyrannical government and collusion of different powers against the people. The executive power, which normally executes the laws voted by the legislative power, usually also has a veto power against certain acts of legislation in order to limit the risk of oppressive or unjust legislation. Sometimes, when it gets very bad, the executive can also disband the legislative power and provoke new elections. Conversely, the legislative power often has the power to demand accountability and transparency from the executive power. If the legislative believes that the executive power acts in impermissible ways it can vote laws that make those acts illegal. And so on.

What are the main differences between PrD and PaD? In a PrD – where you have of course also a parliament – the executive power is elected directly by popular vote. People elect a president and this president selects her government. The people also elect members of parliament in separate elections.

In a PaD, the executive isn’t elected directly by the people. The people elect only the members of parliament. The political party (or parties) that manage to get a majority of elected members of parliament then form a government (often after coalition negotiations between parties when there isn’t one party that has managed to acquire a majority of representatives in parliament).

A PrD seems better able to respect the separation between the executive and legislative powers. A president doesn’t sit in parliament and doesn’t rely on the approval of the legislative for her political survival and hence she is unlikely to always have the same views as the legislative majority. Checks and balances can work. She has an independent mandate from the people and she can have a view that’s different from the view of the parliamentary majority. In PaD, the executive is a product of a parliamentary majority. It’s often even composed of some members of the parliamentary majority who sit both in the government and in parliament. Therefore, it isn’t common in a PaD for the executive to counteract the legislative or vice versa. In a PaD, these two powers are more or less the same. The executive is the parliamentary majority and parliament as such is systematically in agreement with the executive. It’s only the parliamentary minority that can voice opposition. But that’s it: it has a voice but it can’t effectively block executive initiatives, since it’s merely a minority. The act of legislation often originates in the executive that in fact has the power to enact whatever legislation it wants since it automatically has the support of the parliamentary majority. Why is that the case? Members of the parliamentary majority who aren’t part of the executive are often second rate party members who are easily persuaded to approve the legislative initiatives of the executive because their political career depends on the support from the senior party members who make up the executive. For the same reasons, the accountability and transparency requirements are often sidestepped because the parliamentary majority doesn’t want to embarrass the executive.

So, PaD abandons part of the separation of powers in order to gain efficiency. Parliamentary systems, compared to presidential systems, can act in a more decisive and a quicker manner (in theory at least). In a PrD, the president can block legislation coming from parliament or can have her legislative proposals voted down by a parliamentary majority.

However, this efficiency advantage of PaD compared to PrD is often lost when coalitions are necessary. This is why some parliamentary systems avoid proportional representation – which tends to produce more than two political parties with representatives in parliament – and use some kind of district system combined with first-past-the-post elections – which tends to lead to two party systems and hence avoids the need for coalitions.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that PaD doesn’t have any separation of powers at all. It usually has an independent judiciary that can act as a counterweight and that can use for example judicial review to invalidate laws that are incompatible with the constitution. So it really isn’t easy to say which system is preferable. Efficiency is perhaps just as important as separation. Yet the direct election of the executive, which is typical of PrD and also the basis of many of the advantages of PrD compared to PaD, generates more popular control and hence more democracy, and that is important as well. And finally. PrDs are more stable. So on balance I think I prefer PrD.

LGBT Rights (5): Same-Sex Marriage and the Rights of a Democratic Majority

The (in)famous Prop 8, banning same-sex marriage in California, was approved by a democratic majority. This raises the interesting question whether democracy means something more than majority rule. Does democracy mean that a majority can decide whatever it wants? I don’t think so. That would not be a democracy but a tyranny of the majority. Democracy is much more than simple majority rule. (By the way, dictatorships can also have majority approval, but that doesn’t make them democracies).

The decisions of a majority have to take place within a framework of rules. These rules have two functions.

• First, they facilitate the decision making (e.g. rules on free speech, freedom of assembly and association etc.), and therefore they cannot, logically, be violated without undermining the whole system.
• Secondly, these rules limit the kind of decisions that can be taken by the majority. For instance, majorities cannot decide to violate the human rights of a minority. Why? Because these latter rules are basically the same as the former ones. The rules necessary for the successful operation of majority rule are the same, or at least profoundly connected to, the rules granting protection to the minorities. This is called the interdependence of human rights.

If a democratic majority decides to enact laws or policies that violate the human rights of minorities (or individuals, or even majorities), then courts have to step in and enforce the rules of the game. This is not judicial activism by anti-democratic and elitist judges infringing on the democratic rights of the people. It’s judges enforcing democracy, but democracy as something more and better than tyranny of the majority.

We have a clear example of all this in the case of Prop 8 (unfortunately, the courts don’t seem to be playing their constitutional role, yet):

It is our position in this case that Proposition 8, as upheld by the California Supreme Court, denies federal constitutional rights under the equal protection and due process clauses of the constitution. The constitution protects individuals’ basic rights that cannot be taken away by a vote. If the people of California had voted to ban interracial marriage, it would have been the responsibility of the courts to say that they cannot do that under the constitution. We believe that denying individuals in this category the right to lasting, loving relationships through marriage is a denial to them, on an impermissible basis, of the rights that the rest of us enjoy…I also personally believe that it is wrong for us to continue to deny rights to individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation. Ted Olson (source)

There is some discussion on whether the courts should be playing a role in this. Some gay rights advocates insist that it is better to work on public opinion and hope for a general public approval of same-sex marriage in the decades to come. Of course this is a useful strategy, if perhaps somewhat naive (who knows what would have happened to the civil rights movement had the same strategy been applied then). However, the dismissal of any role for the courts, for example because of the fear of a popular backlash against equal rights enforced by unelected courts, amounts to a profound misunderstanding of democracy.

Separation of Powers and Human Rights

The theory of the separation of powers traditionally differentiates between three branches of power:

• the legislative power (parliament)
• the executive (the government, the administration and the police)
• and the judiciary.

Separation of powers means independence of powers with regard to each other. The three powers are separated and divided organizations of the state. No power can assume the competence or functions of another power or can interfere with another power’s business. A few examples:

• The executive should not vote laws (the so-called “government by decree”).
• The legislative power should not appoint or dismiss the government or the head of the executive (this should be a prerogative of the people).
• The judiciary should be able to work without political interference from the legislative power or from the executive, and should be able to judge cases in an independent and impartial way. The judge should not be an instrument of politics or a “political worker” who executes the decisions of the executive, as was the case in Soviet Russia for example. He is subject only to the law, and the law, contrary to an order by Comrade Stalin for example, cannot be used to influence verdicts because it is general and neutral.
• Judges should not interfere in legislation or politics (they enter the stage when the work of politics is already accomplished; they apply the law as it is voted by the legislative).

However, this is not the end of the story. Independence does not mean that a power can do as it likes without accountability. The independence is limited because one power can control, correct, rebuke, limit or stop another power if there is an abuse of power or a violation of rights.

Some interference is necessary. Separation does not mean isolation. Powers are separated precisely because then they can check each other. If all power is concentrated in the same person or institution, then this power cannot be checked. There is no higher power than the state and hence the state must control, limit and correct itself (the “international community” is still very weak). If power has to limit itself, then it has to be divided into different parts. There must be powers and counter-powers, checks and balances. Every power moderates the other powers because every power holds the reins to force the other powers in a certain direction. A citizen must be able to go to one power in order to claim redress or compensation for violations of rights by other powers. Power protects against power and power can contradict and correct power.

Violations of human rights by one part of the state must be corrected by another part, otherwise human rights remain words without reality. Judges can control the laws of the legislature and the actions of the executive. If they find that these laws or actions are incompatible with the human rights included in the Constitution or in an international treaty, then the judges can declare these laws to be invalid or these actions to be unlawful, even if these laws and actions are supported by a democratic majority (which is normally the case in a democracy).

The power of the legislative, the executive and the majority is limited. The judiciary makes sure that both the legislative power and the executive act according to the highest law of the land, which is, after all, also an expression of the will of the majority (at least in an ideal democracy, because an ideal democracy allows the citizens to vote on the Constitution and on international treaties). Human rights and the Constitution can be used against the legislator in order to counteract the tyranny of the majority (also known as democratic oppression). When judges do this, they engage in what is called “judicial review“. The legislator can be wrong and laws can be oppressive. The law is more than just the will of the legislator. A valid law has to conform to certain requirements at the level of content, independently of the will of the legislator. A law cannot be anything, otherwise the rule of law would be a meaningless concept.

I mentioned a moment ago that the judiciary should not interfere with politics or legislation. However, is judicial review of legislation not a part of legislation? Controlling and invalidating laws, overruling the legislative power by way of a veto-right, creating a certain coherence in legislation, making sure that ordinary laws conform to the higher law (the Constitution), is this not legislation? And is it not legislation enacted by a non-elected minority which imposes its will on the majority of the people as it is represented in the legislative power, and which takes its decisions outside of the public debate? Should not an ideal democracy reject judicial review? In other words: is it not impossible for an ideal democracy to protect the rights and freedoms of the minority?

These questions are based on a false hypothesis. When a judge controls the conformity of an ordinary law and a higher law, he does not engage in legislation. He or she only makes sure that the higher law is strictly applied and respected. And as the higher law is the supreme expression of the will of the people – in an ideal democracy, the people can vote the Constitution – a judge only makes sure that the will of the people is strictly executed. There is nothing undemocratic about this and it has nothing to do with legislation. A judge who is confronted with a law which contradicts the Constitution cannot apply this law because otherwise he or she would be acting in an unlawful manner. The higher law has priority over the lower law. A lower law has to conform to the higher law, otherwise it is invalid and non-existing, “null and void”. A judge can declare the illegality of a law and can destroy a law without engaging in legislation.

The judge remains subject to the law and is not above the law or above the legislator when he or she invalidates a law. The judge remains subject to the higher law. Judicial review does not imply that the judiciary is more important or more powerful than the legislative power or than the will of the people. It only implies that the higher law is more important than the lower law and the higher legislator is superior to the lower legislator. Judicial review does not imply an exaggerated or a predominant political or legislative role for the judiciary compared to the role of the legislative power, at least as long as we consider the framing of a Constitution to be part of the legislative power. A judge can never decide on fundamental social problems or political conflicts. He or she can only apply the law, first the higher law and then the lower law.

Human rights possess a threefold significance: they are themselves standards of behavior; they constitute criteria for assessing the lawfulness of other rules (since they override all other norms, which are null and void in case of conflict); [and] they embody “instructions and guidelines” … for the creation and development of other rules. Antonio Cassese.

Individuals whose rights are violated can coerce the state – even though most of the time it is the other way around – but only on the condition that there is a separation of powers and that one power can be used against another.

However, this means that judges should not be predominantly in favor of one political party or one political philosophy, because otherwise they will review the laws from one and the same political perspective. If the judiciary is predominantly conservative, for example, then it will treat liberal laws in a very critical way and it will tend to systematically invalidate these laws because of their conservative interpretation of the Constitution.

Judicial control of the constitutionality of laws and government actions is only one example of a power limiting another. Here are some other examples:

• A judicial verdict applies the law and is therefore dependent on the law. A judge cannot decide what is contrary to the law, which means that the legislator de facto limits the actions of the judiciary.
• The executive is accountable to and is controlled by the legislative power. It has to give account of the way in which it has applied the laws. However, the legislative power cannot dismiss the government as a consequence of this control, at least as long as the government is directly elected, which is the case in an ideal democracy.
• A president often has a veto-right and can block certain laws voted by the legislative power. This is acceptable on the condition that the president is directly elected.

Human Rights and International Law (10): Why Do Human Rights Need International Law?

Human rights law has globalized during the last decades. And it has done so in two ways:

• human rights have become part of most national constitutions
• and have been enshrined in widely accepted international treaties.

In this post, I will look at the relative usefulness of these two movements. The conclusion will be that ideally human rights protection should be a national matter, but in an imperfect world, with failing national protection, international human rights protection is a necessary alternative for human rights protection.

Originally an invention of the French and American revolutions in the eighteenth century, human rights have now become part of a global legal consensus. Although there are many violations of human rights and some philosophical, ideological, cultural, or religious objections to some human rights, the fact is that these rights are part of internationally recognized legal documents (mostly treaties) accepted by the overwhelming majorities of countries. At the same time, they are included in nearly all municipal legal systems (mostly in constitutions). Human rights are the law of mankind, even though they are widely violated. They have been enshrined in the law because they need the law to be adequately protected.

Why do human rights need international law? Isn’t national law enough? These questions may seem strange and perhaps even somewhat useless. Is not the immense effort that has been invested in international human rights law during the last fifty or sixty years proof enough of its utility? I’m not convinced because there is a strong argument in favor of the assertion that the protection of human rights should be first and foremost a matter of national law and national judiciaries.

International law is far removed from ordinary citizens, and if they want to complain about human rights violations they will most likely want to use their national law and their national judiciary. Their own judiciary is closer and hence more accessible and more able to understand and punish. The first responsibility of the international community, therefore, is not regulation or the administration of justice, but assisting countries to reform their national laws and judiciaries in order to make them more compatible with human rights.

However, what if this fails? National law and national judiciaries do not always effectively protect human rights, either because of the absence of adequate national laws or because of the ineffective protection and enforcement of national laws by judiciaries and/or executive powers. And outside assistance and pressure do not always succeed in solving this kind of problem. So, if there is international law protecting human rights, this law can step in when national law fails. Local judges can invoke international law at the expense of inadequate national law. And if not the national law but the national judges are inadequate, international human rights law also provides global mechanisms and institutions allowing citizens to complain about their state’s conduct.

Imagine that such institutions would not exist. That would mean that citizens could only complain to a national organ, an organ of their own state, an organ which may be ineffective, corrupt, incompetent, or perhaps even implicated in the rights violation. And even if these national organs are effective, they are quite useless if there are no international rules for them to apply in place of inadequate national ones. So there is a strong case in favor of international human rights law combined with international monitoring of national human rights situations, and with international complaints institutions to which citizens of a country can turn in order to denounce rights violations by their country.

Ideally, international human rights law and monitoring are unnecessary, and even undesirable, because human rights protection is best carried out on a national level by a state that can correct itself. But this implies the existence of an ideal state with a well-functioning national division of powers, a national “trias politica” in which one power can control and correct the mistakes (e.g., rights violations) of another. As long as not all states are ideal states some national judiciaries need the assistance of international law when their national human rights laws are insufficient or nonexistent, and some citizens need the assistance of international monitoring and enforcement institutions when their national division of powers is insufficient or nonexistent.

As long as we are some distance from Utopia, international law and international monitoring and enforcement institutions are necessary for the universal protection of human rights and should complement national rules and institutions. Countries should be encouraged or, if necessary, pressured to accept international human rights treaties so that citizens can invoke international laws in the absence of national ones. International human rights law traditionally includes the right to monitor and to complain about human rights violations internationally, and this means, in theory at least, that individuals or groups do not have to trust their own state to correct itself and to punish its own crimes. They can involve international monitoring and complaints institutions to further their cause when their national judges are incompetent, unwilling, or unable to implement national rules. Countries should therefore also be encouraged to accept the authority of such treaty institutions wherever this acceptance is voluntary.

Furthermore, the existence of international law makes it easier to reform national law. An international system of law makes it impossible for states to take the law into their own hands and to decide autonomously what is and what is not part of their law. International law is traditionally superior to national law and it can force national law to be compatible with it. It is therefore an additional means to ensure that human rights are part of the law everywhere. By improving national law, international law makes national protection mechanisms more effective. And when it is not the national law but the national protection mechanism and institutions which are defective, international law replaces these mechanisms with global ones, or at least tries to do so (the best global complaints and enforcement procedures are still less effective than the best national judiciaries).

The individual right to denounce violations before an international judicial or quasi-judicial institution gradually took root after World War II. Today, the treatment of citizens by their state is no longer the exclusive competence of the state in question. The days are gone when states could treat their citizens as they liked. Individuals now have a right to speak in the international community and they are no longer confined to national law. They have international law to help them and international stages to voice their protest. International organizations in turn have a right to poke their nose into national affairs and in some cases even to enforce respect for human rights.

This means that citizens are no longer at the mercy of their states and that they can look for outside help if their state does not respect their rights, does not control and correct itself, does not provide mechanisms to enforce their rights (such as laws and the division of powers), or does not make sure that these mechanisms function adequately in all cases.

Most violations of human rights are the consequence of state actions or of actions by representatives of the state. Unless there is a highly effective division of powers, it is unlikely that a state will prosecute itself or its representatives, and it is necessary to have international protection. But national protection within a highly effective system of division of powers must be the first choice. Ideally, national protection is close to the people, easily accessible, legitimate, acceptable, and knowledgeable of local circumstances. It is also close to the perpetrators, which is why effective punishment is more likely than in the case of protection by another country or by an international institution, which may even fail to see the perpetrators, let alone punish them.

National protection is the best option, but also the most difficult one. The perpetrator is often the state or its representatives, which is why national protection can only function within a highly effective system of division of powers. Unfortunately, but not accidentally, most of the more serious violations of rights take place in those states that do not have such a system. National protection can only protect us against relatively minor violations because it can only function in a country with a tradition of separated powers, rule of law, etc.; in a country, in other words, that is unlikely to suffer serious violations of human rights. But still, it is a model that should be used as a universal ideal, even or especially in those countries where it is as yet far from reality. In the meantime, international jurisdiction takes the place of the ineffective national jurisdiction.

What is Democracy? (11): Rule of Law

There is a link between the rule of law and democracy, similar to but without the same tenacity as the link between human rights and democracy. A democracy is by definition a system that respects the rule of law. The democratic election procedures and the human rights necessary for the functioning of democracy are written into enforceable laws that are the sovereign rulers and that govern everybody in the same and equal way.

A democracy respects human rights and therefore, also respects the rule of law, because the rule of law is a part of human rights (some human rights specifically install the rule of law).

However, a state that respects the rule of law does not have to be a democracy. The laws that rule do not have to be democratic laws, do not have to be framed by the people, and do not have to conform to human rights. In order to have a rule of law, it is sufficient that the law rules and that there is a separation of powers, which guarantees and enforces respect for the law. The content and the origin of the laws are irrelevant for the rule of law, but not for democracy and human rights.

A state that respects the rule of law does not have to be a democracy, but the rule of law has the best chances of survival in a democracy. When the people frame the laws, it is more likely that the people will respect the laws, and the laws rule when they are respected. You do not make a law if you plan to break it afterwards. There is no comparison between a law that you impose on yourself and a law that someone else imposes on you. Furthermore, the rules regarding the correct way of handling a court procedure, as they are expressed in certain human rights, make it more likely that the law is enforced in a just and acceptable manner, which also contributes to the rule of law. A system that respects human rights – e.g. a democracy – is therefore more likely to contribute to the rule of law.

A democracy without the rule of law is a farce. Elections alone are not enough. Elections can be manipulated and can be used as a ploy of a leader seeking legitimacy. They can be falsified or they can be held and neglected afterwards. Elections can only be fair within the rule of law. Only the rule of law can enforce respect for election rules and election results. Furthermore, without the rule of law, human rights are not enforceable, and without human rights, there is no proper democracy.

Of course, a democracy requires more than legal protection of the rules and rights which are necessary for the creation and the expression of the will of the people. Once power is granted on the basis of the expression of the will of the people, it is the job of those in power to implement the will of the people. The way in which this will can be implemented, in other words the exercise of power, is also regulated by laws, otherwise, there would be no rule of law. It is not because power comes from the people that this power is always beneficial. It needs to be limited by the principles of the rule of law and by human rights, just as any other kind of power.

The rule of law requires the separation of powers. Courts must be able to protect the laws against bad behavior by other parts of the state. They must also protect the law against the law. Legislation may be designed to violate other laws, for example the fundamental human rights enshrined in the constitution. The courts must be able to stop such legislation. When power is divided, one power can correct the other.