Читать книгу A Citizen’s Guide to the Rule of Law - Kalypso Nicolaidis - Страница 14

Everyone should want to live in a society blessed with the rule of law.

Where you stand free from the tyranny of fear: you may not be treated arbitrarily neither by the state nor the powerful.

Where you stand free of the tyranny of the few: no king, minister, nor Mafioso is above the law.

And where you stand free of the tyranny of the majority: no minority group may be persecuted with impunity.

The rule of law offers you safety, security, and may we say dignity, like a comfortable Iron Man suit protecting you at all times and against all enemies.

It seems intuitively obvious that the rule of law is a good thing to have. Or would you prefer to subject yourself to arbitrary rule by a monarch, government, or mafia godfather? If so, would you not deny yourself the very dignity that makes you human?

We know there are people who find subjugation quite exciting, sometimes even arousing. But even for them, the eventual relief is an integral part of the fascination. Few would freely submit themselves forever to somebody, and even fewer would advocate servitude as a guiding organising principle for modern societies.

It was the German philosopher Immanuel Kant who said that human beings should never be treated as means, for example for someone else’s pleasure. They have an inherent moral value that ought to be respected and protected. Of course, we don’t need Kant to tell us what we intuitively know already: that one should always treat other human beings in a way that one wants to be treated oneself in that particular situation. If there is such a thing as a universal law of humanity, a golden rule, this edict probably lies at its core.

But while generally a good guide in life, intuition has its limits. There are, after all, situations where there is no universal consensus about what the intuitively right thing to do would be. Or is there an intuitively correct answer to the riddle US comedian Stephan Colbert likes to put to his guests, namely whether they would prefer fighting a horse-sized duck over a hundred duck-sized horses?

Then there are events in nature that are true even if they defy our common intuition. A quantum particle can be at two places at once, and a group of people might choose to annihilate another out of fear. Intuition is a predictor neither of truth, nor of morality.

Therefore, saying that we intuitively know what the rule of law is, or at least ought to be, and why it matters, does not really bring us very far in our quest to distil its deeper meaning. And distil it we must, before we can move to the task of actually saving it.