Two interpretations of the rule of law

Since antiquity, the rule of law has been juxtaposed to the rule of men. The ideal of isonomìa, of the equality of all citizens before the law, was promoted by the reform of Athens’s constitution by Clisthenes, which represented the democratic turn of Athens’s politics. The rule by men could grant neither impartiality nor stable expectations of government’s actions, let alone equality of treatment: the rule of men depended on the character, the inclinations, the virtues and the vices of rulers engendering unpredictability in the life of the polis and discretionary power about which citizens had no control. Both Plato and Aristotle set apart the rule of law from the rule of men, arguing that only the former could provide a just and stable polis. The generality of law is a guarantee of impartiality, predictability and equal treatment of all citizens by the political institutions; by the same token, state coercive power is thus limited.