The rule of law is an idea with a long and noble history in Western civilization. The notion is that there are laws of moral behavior and that these laws should have priority over the whims of people, particularly of people in positions of power. Especially in the early United States, the idea that laws should rule as opposed to men was taken as the ideal. However, this idea needs a bit of clarification in order to be more than a cover for tyranny and dehumanization.
The reason why this clarification is necessary is because, to put it simply, the law does not enforce itself. Law also does not elaborate on itself without human intermediation. This means that, however much we may desire the rule of law, we're stuck with the rule of men. And furthermore, if the rule of law is theoretically in force, the men in power gain a cloak of legitimacy which they do not deserve.
Consider the naive idea of the rule of law as enforcement of the dictates of a legislative body. Under this system, there exists a group of people who theoretically possess the moral authority to produce new laws. Once they produce these new laws, they are to be obeyed and enforced. The legislative authority may change its mind at a later date, but the content of the law is still subject to its sole discretion. Now, being merely human, the legislative authority will at some point try to do something contrary to justice. Suppose it does so, and someone is charged with violating the unjust edict. Here we can see both the potential for tyranny and for dehumanization. If the court and the enforcers carry out the unjust edict, they are guilty of abetting injustice themselves.
Even worse, if they buy into the idea of the rule of law over the rule of men, then they are guilty of abdicating their own moral responsibility. They are the ones enforcing the unjust law; the rule of men is in effect. But they duck responsibility for this outrage by pointing to the law and saying, "We are a country of laws, not of men. If I were to try to judge the law itself, I would be substituting my own prejudices and inclinations for the law, and that cannot stand." But in point of fact, regardless of how they decide, they are acting upon their "prejudices and inclination," their personal sense of right. It just happens that their sense of right is to obey the dictates of the legislative authority. They are moral actors, but they pretend to be mere machines enacting the will of some outside agency. It is the duty of a moral actor to identify and act according to justice, but according to the naive rule of law, the enforcers and the court ought not do this, instead behaving like robots.
Properly conceived, the rule of law stands for an ideal, and one which probably never perfectly manifests in the world. There exist objective moral rules which all people should obey, including judges, enforcers, and even legislators. Those who rule should rule according to justice, and when they fail to do so their rulings are not binding. The rule of law is a state of affairs we should strive for, not one we should assume is ever in effect.
This realization splits political science into two branches. On the one hand, what are the criteria of right rule; and on the other hand, how should rulers be cultivated in order that the rule of law prevail? The answer to the second question is complicated, but there are a few things we can pick out fairly easily. For one, mere election by a mass of people who don't know the candidates as people is a bad way of choosing rulers. Instead of selecting rulers for their virtue, the democratic process weeds good people out and installs demagogues and deceivers. An impersonal bureaucracy, rule by appointed officials, isn't much of an improvement, though it does depend on who does the appointing.
The best way of choosing rulers is probably some for of selection from a pool based on heredity. The children of aristocratic families would be educated from a young age according to a curriculum designed to prepare them for grave moral responsibility. Once they came of age, they would be given the opportunity to demonstrate their virtue and skill, with those doing so successfully moving on to greater responsibility and those failing passing off into other careers. New men could enter the aristocracy by marriage or by selection for outstanding accomplishment. This was the basic system in Europe for over a thousand years, giving credit to its durability, though it only reached its greatest degree of refinement in the 18th and 19th centuries. After World War I it passed away completely, but there is definitely something to be said for finding a way to restore it, if that is possible.
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