RULE OF LAW

Dicey 1 said: "It means, in the first place, the absolute supremacy or predominance of regular law as opposed to the influence of arbitrary power, and excludes the existence of arbitrariness, of prerogative, or even of wide discretionary authority on the part of the government. Englishmen are ruled by the law, and by the law alone; a man may with us be punished for a breach of law, but he can be punished for nothing else. It means, again, equality before the law, or the equal subjection of all classes to the ordinary law courts; the 'rule of law' in this sense excludes the idea of any exemption of officials or others from the duty of obedience to the law which governs other citizens or from the jurisdiction of the ordinary tribunals; there can be with us nothing really corresponding to the 'administrative law' (droit administratif) or the 'administrative tribunals' (tribunaux administratifs) of France. The notion which lies at the bottom of the 'administrative law' known to foreign countries is, that affairs or disputes in which the Government or its servants are concerned are beyond the sphere of the civil courts and must be dealt with by special and more or less official bodies. This idea is utterly unknown to the law of England, and indeed is fundamentally inconsistent with our traditions and customs.

SOCIAL SCIENCE AND RESEARCH, 2013

Abstract: India is a great democratic state and the UPA-2 is trying to establish Rule of Law by providing socio-economic and political justice to its citizen and also actively helping to ensure equality, liberty and human dignity. Now days the Right to Information Act and the cyber technology are trying to establish the Rule of Law in India. Rule of Law which is Supremacy of Law, Equality before Law and the Predominance of Legal Spirit is the basic pillar of the British Constitution propounded by Prof. Dicey to protect the citizen from the arbitrary power of the state. Supremacy of law, according to Dicey, the Englishmen are ruled by the law and the law alone. A man may be punished for a breach of law, but can be punished for nothing else. Equality before law means subjection of all classes to the ordinary law of the land administered by ordinary law court. This means that no one is above law. Predominance of legal spirit means that the source of the right of individual is not the written constitution but the rules as defined and enforced by the courts. Keywords: The Concept of Rule of Law, Rule of Law in India, A Cry For Rule of Law In Indian Democracy, Question Mark on Independent Judiciary, Judicial Corruption, Caste Base Reservation Against The Notion of Secularism Within Rule of Law, Corruption or Horse Trading in Parliament, Fake Encounter and Violatio

CONSTITUTIONAL LAW SUBMITTED BY: 1) M JUNAID ABBASI 2) ALLO UD DIN (3151)

P. Costa, D. Zolo (eds), The Rule of Law: History, Theory and Criticism, Springer, 2007

The rule of law and "the liberties of the English". The interpretation by Albert Venn Dicey 1. Law and the liberties of the English At the close of the seventeenth century, following the Glorious Revolution and the victory of the Parliamentarians, it was widely believed among the English that the 'rule of law' had been established and that individual liberty would therefore be assured. Jurists and political theorists began to maintain that judicial procedures, the public nature of trials, the rules relating to evidence together with the role of the jury, ensured solid legal guarantees to those accused of any crime, thereby protecting the fundamental rights of their countrymen. The rhetoric accompanying the battle fought in seventeenth-century England against monarchical absolutism did not put direct emphasis on subjective rights and freedom, but raised the banner of objective law. Sir Edward Coke' arguments best exemplify this attitude. In his works the cry for liberty is drowned by his exultation of the 'law' as the primary condition for freedom itself: "the law is the surest sanctuary, that a man can take, and the strongest fortress to protect the weakest of all" 1. The objective application of the laws and the action of the courts grant the individual protection, Coke's 2 "birth right", enabling everyone to keep safe his goods, lands, wife, heirs, body, life and honour. The law invoked by Coke was none other than 'common law'. Common law was considered to be the source of liberty: along with the legal process it was credited with limiting the power of the monarch and with protecting personal freedom. Whig 3 rhetoric owed its legitimacy to the fact that during the course of the seventeenth century common law had almost virtually eliminated the feudal differences of status, ensuring the near equality of the English subjects before the law with the notable exception of women. The relationship between feudal lords and tenants had by then come to be based on abstract rights as defined by the Royal Courts, and were beyond the landlord's jurisdiction and discretion 4. Certainly, as Douglas Hay 5 has pointed out, the conquests of the revolution proved to be essential for the protection of the gentry, the newly-enriched merchant class who, in the course of the seventeenth century, had begun to rival landowners for the control of English society, against the greed and tyranny of the monarch. One of the main victories of the revolutionaries was the establishment of a normative framework guaranteeing the protection of basic rights in fundamental areas such as the transfer of property, inheritance laws, contracts, wills and writs. The fact that these achievements were grafted onto the well-established tradition of common law lent them stability. Since its very early stages, common law had been characterised by a system of writs designed to safeguard agreements and arrangements between citizens dealing with each other on a par. A seventeenth-century Englishman might well have had the impression of conducting his life within the framework of horizontal legal relationships with his countrymen, in so far as citizens were formally recognised as equal before the law. The vertical dimension was based on the relationship between the citizen and his sovereign, who could not, by definition, damage or encroach upon the rights of his subjects. But it was this very definition that made it impossible for him to be called to judgement or to answer for his actions. In theory, then, citizens' rights were not guaranteed in the case of arbitrary action by the sovereign. But the sovereign's immunity was soon neutralised by the Courts, which elaborated the doctrine according to which, as

The author underscores that the patrimonial liberal Rule of Law (ROL) discourse usually disregards alternative traditions. First, it does not permit any reflection on the normative socialist ROL conceptions. Second, it disregards the very existence of other ROL traditions: for example, the precolonial, those shaped by the revolt against the Old Empire, or the non-mimetic contributions by the proud judiciaries in some "developing societies".

While turning the pages of a recent legal periodical; I noticed a case, K.T. Plantation (P) Ltd. V. State of Karnataka, which deals with 'Principal of rule of law as a basic structure of the constitution of India, re-emphasizedreiterated, rule of law as a concept (explicitly) finds no place in the constitution, but has been characterized as a basic feature of the constitution, which can not be abrogated or destroyed even by parliament and in fact binds the parliament; 1 Rule of law affirms Parliamentary control over the constitution while at the same time denying it sovereignty over the constitution'. These observations are reflective of Court's approach towards the basic concept of rule of law which is result of plethora of case that reflected time and again in last 60 years. The importance of the concept of rule of law directly deals with governance and democracy that is why there are numerous cases which deals with that notion directly or indirectly. Rule of law is the supreme manifestation of human civilization and culture. It is an eternal value of constitutionalism and inherent attribute of democracy and good governance. Theologian Rehind Niebhur noted years ago 'The human capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but human inclination to do injustice to others makes democracy-and the rule of lawnecessary'. Rule of law has become an integral part of global moral thought, E.P. Thompson through not a lawyer but a famous thinker described 'Rule of law' to be 'an unqualified human good' and 'a cultural achievement of universal significance' faithfulness to Rule of law guarantees liberty, equality of opportunity, fairness and a well-functioning society in the face of those 1 A bench of S.

Definition of Administrative Law-Nature and scope-The impact and implications of the Doctrine of Separation and the Rule of Law on Administrative Law, Classification of Administrative Action-the necessity U nit-II Legislative Power of Administration-Doctrine of Vice of excessive Delegation-Judicial and Parliamentary control over delegated legislation-Advantages and disadvantages of delegated legislation-Exclusion of Judicial Review of Delegated Legislation U nit-III Judicial power of Administration-Tests to determine when an administrative authority required to act judicially-Doctrine of Bias-Doctrine of Audi Altrem Partem-Reasoned decision-Exceptions to Natural Justice-Effect of noncompliance with rules of Natural Justice-grounds on which decision of quasijudicial authority can be challenged before Supreme Court U nit-IV Administrative Discretion-Grant and exercise of discretion-Judicial review of Administrative Discretion Control of Administrative Action-Judicial Control-Public Law and Private Law Remedies-distinction Writs-Theory, Practice and Procedure-ouster clause source but the consequences of the rights of individuals, as defined and enforced by the courts." it does not lay down any legal rule but merely explains one aspect of the British Constitutional system where common law is a source of fundamental freedoms of the people. He does distinguish the British system from that of many other countries which had written Constitutions with a chapter on individual rights. Dicey feared that if the source of the fundamental rights of the people was any document, the right could be abrogated at any time by Amending the Constitution this is what happened in India during 1975 emergency. When the Supreme Court ruled that even illegal acts of the government could not be challenged in a court because it was found that the source of personal liberty in India was Article 21 of the Constitution, which had been suspended by the presidential proclamation, and not any common law of the people1. This principle puts emphasis on the role of judiciary in enforcing individual rights and personal freedoms irrespective of their inclusion in a written Constitution. Dicey feared that mere declaration of such rights in any statute or in Constitution would be futile if they could not be enforced. He was right when he said that a statute or even Constitution can be amended and 'Fundamental Rights' can be abrogated. We have witnessed such a situation during the emergency in 1975 and realized that in absence of strong and powerful judiciary, a written Constitution is meaningless. He criticized the French legal system of droit-administratif in which there were distinct administrative tribunals for deciding cases between the officials of the State and the citizens. According to him, exemption of the civil servants from the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts of law and providing them with the special tribunals was the negation of equality. Of course, Dicey himself saw that administrative authorities were exercising 'judicial' functions though they were not 'courts'. He, therefore, asserted: "Such transference of authority slaps the foundation of the rule of law which has been for generations a leading feature of the English Constitution." ANALYSIS ON DICEY'S RULE OF LAW Administrative law Dicey mean only a single aspect of the French droit administratif, namely administrative jurisdiction to the exclusion of ordinary civil and criminal process Dicey admitted after 1901, that he concealed his idea of the nature and existence of administrative law from De Tocqueville, Who himself later admitted his ignorance about the actual working 157 Unit IV ADMINISTRATIVE DISCRETION-GRANT AND EXERCISE OF DISCRETION JUDICIAL REVIEW OF ADMINISTRATIVE DISCRETION

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2013