He's... not wrong. But it's important to realize that rule of law is an Anglo legal and cultural invention. Rule by humans is the default, 'natural' way of organizing human behavior, and innovations over that have to be iterated slowly. We simply cannot expect Western philosophical concepts, as great as they are, to simply be transplantable in other parts of the world just cuz it worked so great for us.
Or does Mr. Weiwei expect the Chinese Communist Party to willfully give up power in order to put itself under a legal regime?
Even Europe has moving slowly away from rule of law towards rule by international technocratic bureaucracy, borne out of the need to make a historically extremely heterogenous landmass peaceful. The UK was never going to be part of that tribe, it's fine with its rule of law.
> He's... not wrong. But it's important to realize that rule of law is an Anglo legal and cultural invention.
And Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, German (speaking), Finnish, Latvian, Estonian at a minimum. The rule of law is very much not an Anglo thing. Outside North(Western) Europe where the rule of law absolutely was a thing you’d be pretty hard pressed to deny that it was never present in Iberia, particularly Aragon, Italy or the entirety of both Latin and Orthodox Christendom. Hell, the Ottoman Empire’s kanun law was based on... canon law.
A government of laws, not men was an ideal dating back to Rome and indeed much earlier. But Christianity preserved Roman law. There were clearly areas that approached rule of law more and less closely but the idea that it’s an Anglo thing is historically ignorant to a ridiculous degree. How closely any particular state approached it varied a great deal, France and Hungary weren’t Prussia or Russia but they certainly weren’t England or Holland either.
If you want to learn more about the various ways premodern societies ordered themselves Francis Fukuyama, Origins of Political Order, is a great place to start.
Having laws, is not the same thing as having the rule of law.
Rule of law refers to something quite specific. That at the very precipice of organizing principles of society, the people at that precipice, are themselves governed by law.
Rule of law means we don't have to worry about Trump turning America into a dictatorship. If you have to worry about your leaders running away with power, then you don't have rule of law.
The idea that Germany, of all countries, has the rule of law is absolutely laughable. This is the country that started WW2 for lebensraum. Everything Hitler did was totally legal. But he still was an autocrat. This is because Germany did not have the rule of law.
Maybe after WW2 Germany figured out how to make sure their leaders can't seize total political control. I'd have to go look. But there's no way under the sun they had it before.
> The idea that Germany, of all countries, has the rule of law is absolutely laughable. This is the country that started WW2 for lebensraum. Everything Hitler did was totally legal. But he still was an autocrat. This is because Germany did not have the rule of law.
I suggest you read more history and novels originally written in German from before the 1900s. The fact that Germany became a dictatorship is hardly dispositive of having the rule of law historically and generally. Germany, more than any other part of Europe was full of lawyers, and the law mattered to a great extent historically. The Holy Roman Empire was full of independent cities, free cities that had charters and were well aware of their rights and defended them and burghers who were keenly aware of the distinction between them and peasants and who engaged in self-rule in the same way as the Dutch did. The fact that it was the militaristic Prussian who unified Germany is a contingent fact. Even Prussia was absolutely a state governed by the rule of law. The Nazis coming to power no more shows that Germany did not have the rule of law than Andrew Jackson defying the Supreme Court to send the Five Civilised Tribes on the Trail of Tears does, or Lincoln suspending habeas corpus, or Roosevelt completely upending the constitutional order and ruling for four terms does.
But at the most basic level, just read this and try and tell me with a straight face that the rule of law was not a German thing.
> Rechtsstaat is a doctrine in continental European legal thinking, originating in German jurisprudence. It can be translated into English as "rule of law", alternatively "legal state", "state of law", "state of justice", "state of rights", or "state based on justice and integrity".[1]
> A Rechtsstaat is a "constitutional state" in which the exercise of governmental power is constrained by the law,[2] and is often tied to the Anglo-American concept of the rule of law, but differs from it in that it also emphasizes what is just (i.e., a concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, religion, or equity). Thus it is the opposite of Obrigkeitsstaat or Nichtrechtsstaat (a state based on the arbitrary use of power),[3] and of Unrechtsstaat (a non-Rechtsstaat with the capacity to become one after a period of historical development).[4]
> In a Rechtsstaat, the power of the state is limited in order to protect citizens from the arbitrary exercise of authority. The citizens share legally based civil liberties and can use the courts.
You are mistaking laws, and legal culture, with the rule of law. I am very aware of the Germanic / Prussic love for law. Sure, they created an elaborate philosophy that thought it held it's rulers to its exacting standards. And maybe a bunch of them played along.
But it was all tossed out the window the second the Germans found it convenient to let a dictator whisper sweet nothings into their ear.
That's the difference. Not in the fictions the common folk tell themselves to help them feel better. But in what actually happens when some ambitious army officer or legislator or populist upstart decides to grab the brass ring. Is your society's legal systems and political customs and culture enough to render them impotent? No? Then you don't have rule of law. You have rule by whatever's got popular legitimacy at the time.
What keeps the Pentagon from surrounding Washington DC with troops and declaring a state of emergency and anointing a dictator? Why aren't Americans even remotely afraid of this possibility, even though military overthrow is something that happens all the time? Rule of law. Why do many Commonwealth countries still to this day accept Queen Elizabeth as their sovereign head of state, even though she has no power other than to make phone calls? Rule of law and respect for the history and events that got them there.
Rule of law means that a country's population, first and foremost, values political stability over all else. Not that you can just get some smart people to jot down a few lofty principles. Rechtsstaat? Should be in the dictionary under 'farce'. The Soviets used those same principles to railroad people in show trials. Kangaroo court.
This is not an abstract concept. Nations have their states coopted by their militaries and demogogues all the freaking time. Why doesn't it happen in Anglo countries, or if it does, is short-lived and useless? Rule of law. Once a society has it, they will defend it to the death. Americans weren't the most well-trained bunch in WW2, but we made up for it in sheer, murderous bravado.
I am not aware of a single successful military coup in German history. Germany was ruled by a dictator for 12 years. The US tossed out its constitution when they found it convenient, see the New Deal. They tossed out treaties when they found them convenient, that’s the entire history of US westward expansion.
Nations may have their states Cooper by militaries and demagogues all the time but no German speaking state was taken over by a junta and Germany was taken over by a demagogue because it was impossible to form a government without one. Hitler did not follow rule of law but neither that no more reflects on the fact that overwhelmingly all the German speaking lands have and did for the great mass of their history than Jackson, Lincoln or Roosevelt show that American rule of law is a farce.
Or does Mr. Weiwei expect the Chinese Communist Party to willfully give up power in order to put itself under a legal regime?
Even Europe has moving slowly away from rule of law towards rule by international technocratic bureaucracy, borne out of the need to make a historically extremely heterogenous landmass peaceful. The UK was never going to be part of that tribe, it's fine with its rule of law.