The “rule of men” implies the arbitrary use of political authority for the betterment of individuals at the expense of others. In contrast, the rule of law means there are clear, reasonable and stable laws consistently applied across society. Where the rule of law is lacking, there is an inevitable decline into a regime of “might makes right.” In such a situation, the rights of the weak are those most in jeopardy.

Because laws naturally reflect the history, culture, and geography of particular peoples and regions, legal systems may look somewhat different from nation to nation. There are, nonetheless, certain features of just legal systems that are common through time and across space. Practicing the rule of law entails the presence and proper functioning of certain institutions: a legitimate lawmaker (preferably a democratically elected legislature but, at the least, a ruler who is responsive to the people and not tyrannical), a judiciary to consistently interpret laws and resolve disputes; and an enforcement system that consistently enforces the law without discriminating.

• The Rule of Law vs. The Rule of Men
• Rule of Law, Natural Justice, and Justice for All
• The Economic Importance of the Rule of Law
• The Moral Foundation for The Rule of Law
• The Rule of Law, Natural Law, and the Ultimate Ground of Morality
• Friedrich von Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty
• John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, no. 44

A rich understanding of the rule of law includes the principles of natural justice, with several elements characterizing a just system of laws and their application. The following are normally included among the characteristics of natural justice:
• Rules are promulgated, and are clear and coherent with respect to each other.
• Rules are prospective rather than retroactive, and not impossible to comply with.
• Rules are sufficiently stable to allow people to be guided by their knowledge of the rules.
• Those charged with the authority to make and administer rules are accountable for their own compliance with the rules, and administer the law consistently.
• There is a recognized division of responsibility in administering the law. No one can, for example, be simultaneously judge, witness, public prosecutor and public defender.

Rule of law is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for achieving the goal of natural justice for all, since it is possible that a society possesses the rule of law to a high degree, but for particular laws themselves to unjustly discriminate against some particular group. “Justice for all” is most closely approached, then, when society is characterized by the rule of law, and the legal code does not unjustly discriminate against some particular group within society.

The findings of development economics show clearly that international aid—payments from the governments of rich countries to the governments of poor countries—is mostly ineffective in spurring economic growth, and in some cases may be counterproductive. Instead, the indispensable factor in the economic progress of developing nations is rule of law. The key to development is a combination of domestic entrepreneurship and private capital investment, domestic and foreign by foreign corporations. These activities cannot be sustained for long without the rule of law.

Peruvian economist Hernando De Soto has argued that when people are forced to operate outside the legal structure for lack of secure property rights, they are unable to pursue higher yeiding long-term strategies for their property, or to use their property to access credit for business enterprise. When political authority fails to enforce just contracts and property rights, incentives to cooperate commercially and to expend effort to acquire wealth evaporate. In such a climate, there is little motivation for people to invest and produce for the long term, since there are so many risks and barriers to successful long-term business ventures.

Similarly, when foreign companies and individual investors are uncertain about the stability of the law in a region, they understandably avoid committing resources to that country. If a company fears that its land or capital goods might be arbitrarily confiscated by politicians, for instance, it will hesitate to invest there. Where international investors discern an unstable rule of law, they conclude that the business climate is unfriendly, and they direct their financial resources to other markets.

In other words, neither foreign direct investment nor a wealth of natural resources is any guarantee in itself that any ensuing economic growth will help the poor of a developing country. Indeed, developing countries rich in natural resources often are marked by extreme poverty amidst abundance. The phenomenon is so common that development economist Paul Collier has given a name to the situation in which abundant oil or mineral wealth corrupts the political system, undermining good governance and the rule of law: the natural resource trap. Only where people are free to participate in government and engage in commerce, and only where the actions of government are transparent and constrained by law is it likely that economic growth will be benefit not only the politically well-connected but people from every social class.

The concept of the rule of law derives from human reflection about what is good and evil. It assumes that people are reasonable creatures, responsible for ordering and channeling their wants in a productive way, even if each of never does this perfectly. The “rule of men,” in contrast, assumes that people must relate to each other by acting without regard to the welfare of others (the common good). Promotion of the rule of law, therefore, is a powerful means of protecting the equality in dignity of all human beings.

It is difficult to sustain the rule of law when the moral culture of a nation is weak. For example, it is difficult to maintain the rule of law where there is a widespread commitment to moral relativism—the concept that absolute truth is nonexistent, impossible to know, or variable depending on circumstances. Traditional legal prohibitions against acts such as murder, theft, and perjury are based on the belief that there are standards of behavior to which all people must adhere and that it is possible for people to know these standards. In many nations, these prohibitions are deeply rooted in the Judeo-Christian religious tradition (including the Ten Commandments).

Where those religious traditions weaken and are replaced by secular relativism, the foundation of the rule of law has only customary habit and an efficiency argument to sustain it. Unfortunately, experience shows that customs tend to wither when shorn of their original animating purpose.  Thus, an efficiency argument made in regard to a whole society may have little effect on a moral relativist who sees some distant and hard-to-quantify damage to the whole culture as a small price to pay for an immediate and concrete personal gain achieved by violating the rule of law.

Finally, citizens must be formed with a sense of moral obligation to observe the law. Where disrespect for law is widespread, legislation becomes irrelevant and enforcement of the law impossible. The rule of law and the moral culture informed by the Judeo-Christian tradition are thus complementary. A robust rule of law embedded within a strong moral culture is the surest foundation for economic development that is just and long-lived.

None of this is to say that a religious tradition such as Christianity guarantees that a citizenry will adhere widely to the rule of law, much less that justice will be effectively extended to all. Both history and religion teach that people are quite capable of ignoring the precepts of their religion, and even of twisting the religion to actively support unjust practices. Nor is any of this to suggest that a culture lacking a robust biblical tradition dedicated to “justice for all” will necessarily be characterized by the arbitrary rule of men. Many Christian theologians with a high regard for the positive influence of Judeo-Christian precepts nevertheless regard the cultural pursuit of widespread natural justice and rule of law as compatible with natural reason, even as many of them also emphasize the role of common grace in strengthening natural reason, and even as they emphasize that no culture composed of fallen humans—Christian or otherwise—will ever achieve a perfectly just system of government.

The point here is that a strong moral framework undergirded by faith in a Creator of absolute goodness can and has encouraged political leaders to understand that they are not above the higher law and therefore should not govern arbitrarily or as if they were a law unto themselves. Conversely, some of those 20th century societies governed by men who rejected the idea of a transcendent moral order descended into the worst horrors of that century (e.g., Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia, the Maoist Revolution in China). As 19th century Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s character Ivan Karamazov presciently explained, without God, everything is permitted.

“The importance which the certainty of law has for the smooth and efficient running of a free society can hardly be exaggerated. There is probably no single factor which has contributed more to the prosperity of the West than the relative certainty of the law which has prevailed here.”

“Such an ordering reflects a realistic vision of man's social nature, which calls for legislation capable of protecting the freedom of all. To that end, it is preferable that each power be balanced by other powers and by other spheres of responsibility which keep it within proper bounds. This is the principle of the "rule of law", in which the law is sovereign, and not the arbitrary will of individuals.”

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