There has never been a generally accepted formulation of the rule of law. Scholars still argue about what it requires, so it works best as a value that can be pursued in many ways, and the rule of law is not a plan for building a state. No single institution is necessary for it, and it is tied to no one country, so arrangements that work in one place may not transplant easily to another. Britannica notes that for most modern democratic societies the rule of law's demand that both rulers and ruled be accountable to the law is of unquestionable value, while some views reject it. Law is the set of customs, practices and rules of conduct of a community that the community recognizes as binding, and it is enforced by a controlling authority.
The rule of law means that no one, even the most highly placed official, is above the law, and that government is bound by existing laws as much as its citizens are. "The rule of law" is a different idea from "a rule of law." A rule of law is one particular legal rule, such as the rule that we must file our taxes by a certain date. Rule-of-law thinkers list formal principles: norms that are general, clear, public, stable and forward-looking. Laws must also be something people can follow, and they should not demand too much of people, and should stay internally consistent, with legal ways to settle contradictions. Rule-of-law states usually keep judges separate from the people who hold power, so officials cannot interfere with court decisions.
Under the rule of law, laws should be open, clear and knowable to all, and people must be able to consult them before acting, and a person should not be punished under a law made after the act. Some thinkers add substantive ideals to the rule of law, such as a presumption of liberty, property rights or human rights, but these are much more controversial. The United Nations describes the rule of law as everyone, including the state, answering to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced and independently adjudicated. For the rule of law to be more than an empty principle, most people in a society, including those who administer the law, must believe that no individual or group should be above it. A binding written constitution is widely thought to help the rule of law, and most states in the world have adopted one.
Ideas about the rule of law go back at least to the 4th century BCE, when Aristotle set the rule of law apart from rule by any one person. In the 18th century the French thinker Montesquieu worked out a doctrine of the rule of law that set the lawful authority of monarchs against the caprice of despots. Despotic governments include even highly organized ones where the ruler can act without the constraint of law when it wishes, and the rule of law is meant to prevent that arbitrary use of power. A good rule is clear and open, so everybody can know what it is, and a fair law is for everyone the same, and equality before the law means no one gets special privileges.
Hammurabi was a king of Babylon who ruled from 1792 to 1750 BCE, and his legal decisions were collected and carved into a stone pillar so people could see them. The Code of Hammurabi has 282 case laws, and they cover prices and trade, marriage and divorce, theft and assault, and debt. The code went beyond tribal custom: it recognized no blood feud, private retribution or marriage by capture. In the code, penalties varied with the status of the offender and the circumstances of the offense, while modern rule-of-law ideals call for impartial treatment that does not consider class, status or power. You may have read that it was the first written set of laws. In fact, it was built on Sumerian law that communities had lived under for many centuries, and the Sumerians had the earliest known law codes.
English kings before John, such as Henry I, issued charters promising good government at their coronations after pressure from nobles and clergy. In the 12th century a tradition grew in England that a king's coronation oath should be backed by written promises sealed by the king. Magna Carta came out of that tradition. Tax increases under Richard I, from his Crusade, his ransom and his war with France, added to the nobles' discontent. King John granted Magna Carta in 1215 under threat of civil war.
Magna Carta was reissued with changes in 1216, 1217 and 1225. When it was written, it secured only the rights of a privileged class of the king's subjects. Magna Carta says the king himself is bound by law, and that idea gave later Anglo-American law its base for individual rights. Over centuries Magna Carta became an enduring symbol of liberty and the rule of law.
The Mayflower landed outside the area its charter covered, which left the passengers in a legally uncertain situation and led to friction that the Mayflower Compact was meant to settle. The Compact was signed in 1620, and it was the first framework of government written and enacted in what is now the United States. It was about 200 words long, and it pledged signers to obey laws made "for the general good of the colony." It was signed by 41 of the 102 passengers, nearly all of the adult men aboard.
Social contract thinkers include Hobbes, Locke, Kant and Rousseau, and their idea is that the rules we live under can be explained as an agreement among people. Social contract theories were most popular in the 17th and 18th centuries, and they tried to justify government by comparing its advantages with life without it. Hobbes wrote in 1651 that without government there would be no enforceable right and wrong, and life would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." For Hobbes the ruler's authority is absolute, but people stay free to act as they please where the law is silent. Locke instead said a ruler who broke the terms could justly be overthrown.
Locke wrote in 1690 that people leave the state of nature to form a commonwealth with an impartial power to settle disputes and fix injuries. Locke held that there can be no subjection to power without consent, and once a society is formed, citizens are bound by majority decisions, but the legislature's powers are not absolute. Social contract theories had different aims, and some defended the power of the ruler, and others were meant to protect individuals from a ruler who was too powerful. The social contract is a metaphor and needs interpretation when applied to morality or politics. Contractarians also say such agreements need rules to guide how they are formed. Philosophers note a limit of contract theory: given a bad enough starting situation, contractarianism may justify an unjust arrangement.
The United States Constitution begins with the words "We the People of the United States." The Constitution united its citizens as members of a whole and placed the power of the union in the people. All four pages of the Constitution are on permanent display at the National Archives, and the Constitution gives the power to make federal laws to Congress, which has a Senate and a House of Representatives. Article I lets Congress make all laws that are necessary and proper for carrying out its powers. A law starts as an idea, and a representative sponsors a bill and a committee studies it. If the committee releases it, the bill is put on a calendar to be voted on, debated or amended. In the House a simple majority is 218 of 435 votes, and in the Senate it is 51 of 100, and the bill must pass both. After a bill passes both chambers, the President has 10 days to sign or veto it.
The tragedy of the commons, made popular by Garrett Hardin, is a conflict between individual and group interests, and each rancher gains by adding animals on a shared field, but together they ruin it. One of the main jobs of government at every level is to define and manage shared resources, which gets harder when a resource crosses borders. Scholars have proposed several ways to avoid commons tragedies: set property rights, regulate through government, or build strategies that trigger group cooperation. Elinor Ostrom challenged the common view that shared property is badly managed and must be either regulated by central authorities or privatized.
Ostrom studied fish stocks, pastures, woods, lakes and groundwater basins run by their users, and the outcomes were more often than not better than standard theories predicted. Ostrom observed that resource users often build their own ways of deciding and enforcing rules to handle conflicts of interest, and she described which rules lead to success. She showed that common property can be managed well by the people who use it, working through user associations. Ostrom shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, "for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons." She worked at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, when she won the 2009 prize.
In a crash, an unbelted person keeps moving at the same travel speed until crashing into what is in front of them, and a seat belt spreads crash forces across the stronger bones of the body: the shoulder, rib cage and pelvis. Wearing a lap and shoulder belt reduces the risk of fatal injury by 45 percent in a car and by 60 percent in an SUV, van or pickup. Being completely ejected from a vehicle in a crash is almost always deadly, and NHTSA calls buckling up the single most effective thing a person can do to protect themselves in a crash. NHTSA estimates seat belts saved 14,955 lives in 2017, and could have saved 2,549 more if those people had worn them.
Seat belt laws raise belt use, especially when enforcement is publicized, and the strongest laws allow primary enforcement: police can stop a driver just for not using a belt. With secondary enforcement, police can enforce the belt law only if they stopped the driver for another violation first. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety began rating seat belt reminders in 2022, after finding that good reminders increase belt use. The national seat belt use rate in the United States was 91.3 percent in 2025. As of November 2026, nearly half of the people who die in car crashes are not wearing a belt.
Words to know
- despotic: ruling without limits
- substantive: about content
- contractarianism: contract theory
- adjudicated: court-decided
- consent: free agreement
