Rule of law

Subject:Polity

Context:

The Supreme Court has said that government has the responsibility to uphold the law while hearing a plea connection with the death of gangster Vikas Dubey.

Concept:

• The concept of equality before law is an element of the concept of  Rule of Law, propounded by A.V. Dicey, the British jurist. His concept has the following three elements or aspects:

• Absence of arbitrary power, that is, no man can be punished except for a breach of law.
• Equality before the law, that is, equal subjection of all citizens (rich or poor, high or low, official or non-official) to the ordinary law of the land administered by the ordinary law courts.
• The primacy of the rights of the individual, that is, the constitution is the result of the rights of the individual as defined and enforced by the courts of law rather than the constitution being the source of the individual rights.
• The first and the second elements are applicable to the Indian System and not the third one. In the Indian System, the constitution is the source of the individual rights.
• The Supreme Court held that the Rule of Law as embodied in Article 14 is a basic feature of the constitution. Hence, it cannot be destroyed even by an amendment.

Rule of Law Index

• The World Justice Project Rule of Law Indexis the world’s leading source for original, independent data on the rule of law.
• The Rule of law Index measures “how the rule of law is experienced and perceived by the general public.”
• In 2019, on this Index, India was ranked 68 out of 126 countries, down 3 places from last year.
• This Index measures performance across various socio-legal and political focus-areas including “Open Government, Fundamental Rights, Regulatory Enforcement, Civil Justice, and Criminal Justice.”
• India has never been rated among top 50 in the index.
• Recently a petition was filed in SC to direct the government to take measure to improve its ranking on the index