neither
laws nor the procedures used to create or implement them should be secret; and ... the laws must not be arbitrary. ...
US Court of Apeals Judge Diane Wood, "The Rule of Law in Times of Stress" (2003)
Judge Wood's comments highlight the need for, 1st, an open and transparent system of making laws and, 2nd, laws that are applied predictably and uniformly. Openness and transparency are essential. If people are
unable to know and understand what the law is, they cannot be expected to follow it. At the same time, people deserve to know why a particular law has been passed and why they are being asked to obey it.
The rule of law also requires that people can expect predictable results from the legal system; this is what Judge Wood implies when she says that "the laws must not be arbitrary." Predictable results mean
that people who act in the same way he can expect the law to treat them in the same way. If similar actions do not produce similar legal outcomes, people cannot use the law to guide their actions, and a "rule of law" does not exist.
When we [Americans] talk about the rule raw, we assume that we are talking about a law that promotes freedom,
that promotes justice, that promotes equality.
US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Justice Kennedy suggests that the rule of law has taken on special meaning for the people of the United States, based on our history of looking to the law to fulfill the promises of freedom, justice, and equality set forth in our nation's founding documents. As will be further discussed in part 2 of the dialogue, our understanding of the rule of law in the United States did indeed develop around the
belief that a primary purpose of the rule of law is the protection of certain basic rights. The United States Constitution represented the 1st effort by a nation to establish a written constitution of laws that would bind the government and guarantee particular rights to its people. Today the rule of law is often linked to efforts to promote protection of human rights worldwide.
There can be no free society without law administered through an independent judiciary. If one man can allow to determine for himself what is law, every man can. That means 1st chaos, then tyranny. UNITED STATES VERSUS UNITED MINE WORKERS (1947)
To make laws that man cannot and will not obey, serves to
bring all law into contempt. It is very important in a republic, that the people should respect the laws, for if we throw them into the winds, what becomes of civil government?
No Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor send upon him, except by the lawful judgment of
his peers or by the law of the land. Article 39, Magna Carta (1215)
EQUITABLE ESTOPPEL is that condition in which justice forbids one to gainsay[deny condradict] his own acts or assertions.
The preclusion of person by his act or conduct or silence from asserting rights which might otherwise have existed.
The species of estoppel which equity puts upon a person who has made a false representation or a concealment of material facts, with knowledge of the facts, to a party ignorant of the truth of the matter, with the intention that the other party should act upon it, and with the result
that such party is actually induce to act upon it, to his damage.
