DEMOCRACY AND THE RULE OF LAW
DEMOCRACY AND THE RULE OF LAW

Summary/Abstract: In the first part of the article it is pointed how two ideas that have a long history – democracy and rule of law – in the modern European history have become a part of the Western Civilization foundations. And how it is searched for their appropriate institutionalization in political and legal systems. But, although the synthesis of the two has been persistently wished, there are also great contradictions between them. In the course of history the political will and power prevailed and treated law just as a means of commanding over subjects and obliging them to do what rulers expected of them, with little or no readiness or will on the side of rulers (with rare exceptions) to accept law as a limit of their power and to obey laws that they themselves proclaimed and codified. Judean and Western Civilizations, however, proclaimed superiority of laws over any political will or power.“The Rule of Law, and not of Man”, was among credos of constitutionalism as a doctrine and political movement aiming to limit every government to what is acceptable by reason of laws. One of the premises of this article is that it refers to the will of majority, i.e. to democracy, and that opens up many issues which are considered.

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