Rule of Man or Rule of Law?

From Fee.org (Jan. 14):

The rule of law sounds boring, but—along with its companion, property rights—it is the single most important factor in quality governance.

If you compare two geographically similar areas—say Florida and Haiti—and ask why the former is prosperous and peaceful, and the latter is not, the rule of law is the most important reason for the difference. The West triumphed relative to its competitors over the past thousand years not because of climate or ethnicity, but because of the evolution of all sorts of institutions (good rules) that fit under the rule of law.

Despite its importance, few educated adults, and fewer students, would list “the rule of law” as central to our prosperity. Perhaps they haven’t fully experienced the alternative—which one might call “the rule of man.” We only half-notice the order in which we live, without thinking about how it developed or what its alternatives are. We forget what Locke stated in England’s Glorious Revolution: “Where there is no law, there is no freedom.”

Locke's statement doesn’t mean that all laws makes us freer: We rightly intuit that Obamacare or NSA spying aren’t exactly expanding our freedom by leaps and bounds. The Lockean understanding of laws, and a pretty good litmus test of any proposed legislation today, is that laws must enlarge an individual’s freedom.

Laws do this best when they are:

• simple rules,
• evolved over time,
• agreed upon and known by all,
• rarely changed, and
• applied equally to all people.

An individual law may be silly, but if it fits the most of the above criteria, it likely is better to live under it that than to be ruled by a ruler, who is likely to be capricious and arbitrary. [read more]

Interesting essay. The tax rules are not simple, not known by all, always changing, and not applied equally to all people. Actually, you could say that about most bureaucratic regulations. The Ten Commandments and the Bill of Rights are simple rules and rarely changed. Well, the Commandments and Bill of Rights never changed and probably should never change. Both should be agreed upon and known by all. Both are definitely equally applied to all people.

The physical laws of nature like Isaac Newton’s Three Laws of Motion, and Johannes Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion are simple rules (each contain only 3 laws) that never change and apply equally to all objects in the universe.

The author gives an example of the Roman Emperor Claudius was fond of pronouncing edicts, issuing dozens of them per day, even declaring that public flatulence was good for one’s health. Evidently he never heard of climate change.

Not sure what the author means by laws should “evolve over time.” Evolution usually means change so that kind of contradicts his assertion that laws should rarely change.  Also, laws like living organisms can devolve too.