For similar reasons, the rule of law is restricted when the government tries to punish someone for violating a vague or poorly worded law. Undefined laws give too much discretion to government officials charged with prosecuting individuals for criminal misconduct. The more prosecutorial decisions are based on the personal discretion of a government official, the less they are based on the law. « Higher Law ». Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/higher%20law. Retrieved 11 October 2022. The Russian legal system, which emerged in the 19th century thanks to the reforms of Emperor Alexander II, was (and still is) primarily based on the German legal tradition. From the latter, Russia adopted the doctrine of the rule of law, which literally translates to « rule of law ». The next English analogue is « the rule of law ». [12] The Russian concept of the rule of law adopts the written constitution as the supreme law of the land (the rule of the constitution). It is a fundamental but undefined principle that appears in the very first provision of Russia`s post-communist constitution: « The Russian Federation – Russia – forms a democratic federal constitutional state with a republican form of government. » Similarly, the very first optional provision of the Ukrainian Constitution states that « Ukraine is a sovereign and independent, democratic, social and legal State ».

Therefore, the effort to make sense of the definition of the « rule of law » is anything but theoretical. During his second term, President Richard M. Nixon sought to put the executive branch of the federal government beyond the reach of a trial. When he received a subpoena asking him to produce a number of recordings purporting to link him to the Watergate conspiracy and cover-up, Nixon refused to comply, saying the confidentiality of those recordings was protected from disclosure by absolute and unfettered executive privilege. In United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683, 94 pp. Ct.

3090, 41 L. Ed. 2d 1039 (1974), the Supreme Court disagreed and forced the President to hand over the recordings because the Constitution prohibits any branch of government from unilaterally thwarting the legitimate purposes of a criminal investigation. Prior to the American Civil War, African Americans were denied equal rights and freedoms under formal codes that dictated master-slave relations. While these codes are de jure adapted to legal practice, their application by the U.S. government de facto violates the fundamental human rights of a significant portion of the population. William H. Seward proclaimed that slavery is prohibited by « a law superior to the Constitution. » The rule of law requires that the government exercise its authority in accordance with established and clearly written rules, regulations and legal principles. Sometimes a distinction is made between power, will and violence on the one hand and law on the other. When a civil servant acts on the basis of an express provision of a written law, he or she is acting within the framework of the rule of law. But when a government official acts without the imprimatur of a law, he or she does so by the simple power of personal will and power. The Russian concept of the rule of law has adopted many segments of constitutional economics, which serves as a practical implementation of higher legal theory in economics.

The rule of law also requires that the government exercise its statutory powers. This requirement is sometimes explained by the phrase « No one is above the law ». During the seventeenth century, however, the English monarch was endowed with absolute sovereignty, including the prerogative to disregard the laws of the House of Commons and to ignore the decisions of the House of Lords. In the eighteenth century, absolute sovereignty was transferred from the British monarchy to Parliament, an event that did not escape the attention of the colonists who sparked the American Revolution and created the U.S. Constitution. Under the rule of law, no one can be prosecuted for an act that is not punishable. If the government tries to punish someone for a crime that was not classified as criminal at the time it was committed, the rule of law is violated because the government exceeds its legal power to punish. The rule of law requires that government be accountable only to the extent permitted by law. The government exceeds its powers when a person is held responsible for an act that was legally permitted in the first place, but was declared illegal retroactively.

This principle is reflected in the prohibition of ex post facto laws in the U.S. Constitution. Higher Law rule is a practical approach to the implementation of superior legal theory, creating a bridge of mutual understanding (with regard to universal legal values) between the English-language rule of law, traditionally for common law countries, and the original German doctrine of law, translated into other continental European languages as the rule of law (French). estado de derecho (Spanish), stato di diritto (Italian) and Правовое государство (pravovoe gosudarstvo) (Russian). [7] The latter doctrine is the product of continental European legal thought, which it had borrowed from German philosophy of law.