Rule according to higher law

[1] Thus, the rule according to a higher law may serve as a practical legal criterion to qualify the instances of political or economical decision-making, when a government, even though acting in conformity with clearly defined and properly enacted law, still produces results which many observers find unfair or unjust.

Therefore, they argue that any government may strip its subjects of their fundamental freedoms or infringe their vital interests so long as that is done by way of a duly-implemented legal mechanism.

For example, at the Nuremberg trials, in an attempt to justify their crimes against Jewish and Romani population of Europe during World War II, some of the former leaders of Nazi Germany argued that they had broken none of the laws that were effective when Hitler had been in power.

[10] In other countries, conversely, political leaders assert that all written laws must be kept in line with the universal principles of morality, fairness, and justice.

[12] Kant's approach is based on the supremacy of country's written constitution created using principles of the Higher Law.

This supremacy meant creating guarantees for the implementation of his central idea: a permanently peaceful life as a basic condition for the happiness and prosperity of the citizens.

Valery Zorkin, President of the Constitutional Court of Russia, wrote in 2003, "Becoming a legal state has long been our ultimate goal, and we have certainly made serious progress in this direction over the past several years.