Rule of man

[11][12] Rule of man is associated with numerous negative concepts such as tyranny, dictatorship and despotism, and their variations that have taken the form of the Thirty Tyrants, the Jacobin dictatorship (Reign of Terror) during the French Revolution, Caesarism, Bonapartism and spiritual gift politics (also known as charismatic power), and regimes like Joseph Stalin and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP.

[15] Despite theoretical associations of what constitutes a bad or good government, political realism dictates that rules will be established irrespective of the rulers being dictatorial or democratic, one or many.

[17][18] James Harrington would go on to pen the phrase "a government of laws and not of men" in 1656,[19] which in turn found its way into the Constitution of Massachusetts where John Adams was the principal author.

Although each school of thought has not lacked in its votaries, in the aggregate the thinking has been in favour of the rule of law.

On occasions we have slipped back into government by will only to return again sadder and wiser to the rule of law when hard facts of human nature demonstrated the selfishness and egotism of man and the truth of the dictum that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

[25] However similar concepts had their own origins in China as early as 536 BC, when Zi Chan attempted to make law less arbitrary and more permanent by getting it inscribed and put on public display.

Archeologist Federico Halbherr at Gortyn (Crete, Greece), deciphering Gortys law code (inscription on the circular wall). As opposed to the rule of man , the rule of law, is "the principle whereby all members of a society (including those in government) are considered equally subject to publicly disclosed legal codes and processes". Oxford English Dictionary [ 16 ]