Law and the Rule of Law

What is a Law?

“Don’t run with scissors in your hand!”

“Don’t drive your car on the sidewalk!”

“Do not steal your neighbor’s property!”

How many times a day does someone tell you what to do? How often do you have to stop yourself from doing what you want, because you know that this action is prohibited or wrong?

In the United States, it seems like we have laws, rules, and regulations to oversee just about everything. We don’t always like these rules, since they often mean that someone is telling us what to do, or keeping us from doing what we want. Yet to live in a civil society, we must have some rules to follow.

Who gets to make these rules? Where do they come from? What happens when we break them? These are the questions this page will seek to answer for you.

LAW

aws are rules that bind all people living in a community. Laws protect our general safety, and ensure our rights as citizens against abuses by other people, by organizations, and by the government itself. We have laws to help provide for our general safety. These exist at the local, state and national levels, and include things like:

Laws about food safety. At the state and local level, health departments have guidelines that restaurants follow for how to store and prepare food in a healthy manner, so that diners won’t get sick. At the national level, the Department of Agriculture and other federal agencies inspect food production plants to be sure that the food that shows up in your supermarket is safe to eat.
Speed limits and traffic laws exist so that we drive in a safe manner.
Licensing for doctors and nurses ensures proper training of the people who look after us, and who often have our lives in their hands.

We also have laws that protect our rights as citizens, and which include things like:

Laws that come from the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution, that guarantee our basic freedoms like freedom of speech, religion, and the press.
Laws that protect us from discrimination because of our race, gender, age, or because of a disability.

Where do Laws come from?

In the United States, the Constitution is the ultimate source of the law. However, it was never designed to address every specific legal question. Within the boundaries of the Constitution, there are two primary sources of law, common law and statutory law.

Common Law
Statutory Law

This law comes from the judicial branch. Though the courts do not pass laws, they do interpret them. This means that the judiciary bases their legal decisions on what is written in the Constitution, and on previous court rulings in similar cases. This is a process called stare decisis which in Latin means “let the decision stand.”
Statutes are laws created by the legislative branch through the lawmaking process. Statutes are written, discussed, argued and voted on in Congress or in the legislature of a state. The courts then apply and interpret these statutes on a case by case basis.

Laws Over Time
The thing about living in a democracy is that the laws change over time. The laws needed in 1789 when the Constitution was born, and in 1890, 1950, or 1990, are different from the laws needed today. The legislative branch of government must seek to update laws as needed, and the judicial branch has to interpret the laws so that they apply fairly to society at the time.
- For example, laws about bullying or stalking have had to be updated to consider social networking sites, cyber bullying and cyber stalking. The original laws didn’t take the internet into consideration.
More About Laws
The laws of our nation generally arise out of our shared values and morals. In our nation we have laws at both the national and state levels. As citizens, we tend to be most familiar with state and local laws, since these are the laws we encounter most in our daily lives. These laws protect us against crimes like murder, robbery, rape, and assault. They also insure that we don’t drive too fast, that we mow our lawns and keep our dogs on leashes. In the United States, we also have a national government which makes laws. On the national level, we have laws about internet crime, narcotics, treason, as well as things like copyright and patents.
Laws are sometimes controversial, and citizens do not always agree on what should be illegal. Though laws tend to come out of our shared values as a society, not everything that is immoral is illegal. For example:
- Foul Language may be offensive to some people, but it isn’t illegal.
- Narcotics are illegal in most cases, yet some people would like them to be legal for everyone, while others find them to be a threat to public safety and support current laws.
Recently we have seen state and local governments making some laws that may cause us to question the limits of government's power. For example:
- Should a state be able to limit the sale of large, 40 ounce sodas in the name of supporting good health?
- Should teachers be able to use Facebook? Can they “friend” their students?
- Should a city be able to limit the number of fast food restaurants in a neighborhood, to try to make residents make healthier food choices?
- Should a municipality be able to tell you how “low” to wear your pants?

The Rule of Law

President Theodore Roosevelt once said, "Ours is a government of liberty, by, through and under the law. No man is above it, and no man is below it."

Rule of Law 1
The American commitment to the rule of law means that every citizen is governed by the same laws, applied through a fair and equal judicial process to resolve disputes peacefully.
Rule of Law 2
Faithfulness to the rule of law allows us to live in a civil society in which everyone’s rights are respected; where each of us is guaranteed liberty and equality of opportunity.
Rule of Law 3
As citizens we respect the laws because they are clearly communicated and fairly enforced. Everyone is held accountable to the same laws, and those laws protect our fundamental rights. This is the foundation of the rule of law in the United States.
Rule of Law 4
The words “Equal Justice Under Law” are engraved on the front of the United States Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C... These words embody the ideal of the RULE OF LAW, which is at the heart of our American democracy.
Rule of Law 5
In the United States, we have written laws in place to help us settle disagreements peacefully through a fair system of justice. It is the job of the courts to interpret the laws. It is up to judges and juries to decide if we have indeed broken the law.