The Rule of Law

3586 Words15 Pages
RULE OF LAW. Introduction In this essay, i concur to say that rule of law has lost its meaning for several reasons. One of the reasons is something I would term as ‘hypocrisy’. Governments preach water but drink wine. Each and every government claims its practicing rule of law and its decisions are in accordance with the law of the land but that’s always not the case. While rights might be entrenched in the constitution, protecting such rights speaks volume to whether a state is governed by rule of law or not but not just because such rights are in the constitution. An example of such cases is the case of Falun Gong practitioners in china, who are denied the right to practice religion of their choice while such right is entailed in Article 36 of Chinese constitution which provides the right to freedom of religion. This essay will focus on what rule of law is (definition), why it’s claimed to have lost its meaning, what constitute rule of law and some criticism of the notion. The Rule of law is an important prevalent concept in the current legal and political discourse both at national and international levels. Despite wide use by politicians, judges and academics, the rule of law has been described as "an exceedingly elusive notion"giving rise to a "rampant divergence of understandings ... everyone is for it but have contrasting convictions about what it is." Has ‘the rule of Law’ become meaningless? According to political theorist Judith N. Shklar,..”It would not be difficult to show that the phrase ‘the rule of law’ has become meaningless thanks to ideological abuse and general over – use.” “This means that the doctrine of rule of law has lost both its descriptive and prescriptive force. It does not correctly represent the reality of the post – modern state nor does it provide a model for assessing its performance.In my attempt to answer this question, I’ll
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