Rule of Law- What it mean?

the concept in UK as well as in India it can be concluded that the Dicey’s Concept of Rule of Law is idealist in Nature which is quite impossible to implement in the nation like India. According to Dicey’s theory justice must be done through known principles of law and not by principles of men. He believes that where there is discretion there is always a room for arbitrariness. Our framers of the constitution while incorporating the parent act tried to involve the concept into the Constitution of India but the intention with which our framers incorporated the concept have gone invain.

Today, we need the rule of law for punishing deviations and lapses from the code of conduct and standards of behaviour which the community speaking through its representatives has prescribed as the law of the land. Once an impression comes to prevail that it is difficult to secure the conviction of the actual culprits in a court of law, the victims of the offence or their close relatives, would look to extra-legal methods to settle scores with the culprits. Such a situation would necessarily be a precursor to collapse of administration of criminal justice and result in a state of chaos and anarchy. Every effort has, therefore, to be made to eliminate or in any case minimise political and other extraneous interference in the investigation of the crimes. Unless we can do that, the rule of law for which we have such ideological affinity would suffer grievous casualty and be subjected to severe strain.

Today in India, the strange phenomenon and paradox is that while on ideological plain democracy is supposed to strengthen the rule of law and the administration of criminal justice, in actual practice, the electoral process which is an integral part of democracy is undermining the rule of law and due administration of criminal justice. This must be put to an end. The traditional concept in all civilized liberal nations is that democracy and rule of law are close allies of each other. It has to be the effort of all well-meaning persons to ensure that their kinship is not weakened and that each of them continues to lend strength to the other.
The concept of rule of law does not merely mean formal legality which assures regularity and consistency in the achievement and enforcement of democratic order, but justice based on the recognition and full acceptance of the supreme value of the human personality and guaranteed by institutions providing a framework for its fullest expression.

Despite its inconsistencies, its crudities, its delays and its weaknesses, Rule of Law still embodies so much of the results of that disposition as we can collectively impose. Without it one cannot live; only with it one can insure the future which by right is ours. The best of man's hopes are enmeshed in its process; when it fails they must fail; the measure in which it can reconcile our passions, our wills, our conflicts, is the measure of our opportunity to find ourselves. Man may be a little lower than the angels, he has not yet shaken off the brute and the brute within is apt to break loose on occasions. To curb and control that brute and to prevent the degeneration of society into a state of tooth and claw, what is required is the ‘Rule of Law’.