Understanding the Rule of Law: Principles, Rights, and Discrimination
Rule of law: Demands the day which puts us in contact with the law.
Law: – Law is the set of rules which may be enforced in a coercive manner. It is then called “objective law.”
– Law is the ability to act that allows us to target law. Legal rules not only allow us to require, not only prohibit, but defend our freedoms. They are called “rights.”
Positive rights are those that are enacted by a State, through the law. There is no positive law without legislative action of a State. Some authors believe that this is the only existing law.
The moral or natural rights may have “rights” that are not recognized by the laws. We say that the laws may be unfair if they do not recognize the rights that exist independently of the law and before it. Human rights belong to the second type.
The purpose of rights is security, order, and peace. The order must be accompanied by justice. The law has as its mission the implementation of justice. The rights allow us to expand our possibilities for action. Thanks to rights, we can do more things that we could do with just our strength. The pursuit of justice leads us into a network of reciprocity.
The person is the central concept of the law because all persons have legal capacity, but the capacity to act acquires with age.
Public law is the set of rules governing the organization and activity of the State and other public bodies, regulating the relations of state and public entities with individuals.
Private law regulates the activities of individuals. It exerts some control over the government, but it essentially promotes the free initiative of individuals.
We live in a state of law, this means that the law regulates and controls the power and state activity. We enjoy legal security, i.e., a set of conditions and legal safeguards that protect us from abuse and arbitrary actions.
It arrived in this situation after the admission of habeas corpus, which prohibits a person from being held indefinitely without presenting to the judge. Then came the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen in which he states that “No man can be accused, arrested or detained except in cases specified by law, and according to the procedures for it.” The need to bring up problems of how to do it right. We must punish the responsible for the harmful act. Another difficult issue was to prove who was the culprit.
Main legal assurances: – You can only judge according to the laws enacted and public. – You cannot stop a suspect for more than 72 hours without appearing before a judge. “You cannot torture.” From the time of his arrest, a person can have the services of a lawyer, and the trial shall be accompanied by counsel. “If the victim does not have financial means, the State must provide a free lawyer.”
A legal norm is legal when it has been approved according to law, i.e., the institutions and procedures legally recognized and established for it in the Constitution itself.
A rule is legitimate when, in addition to being legal, it is fair, i.e., it agrees with the values and higher principles of justice.
Legal positivism is a theory that the legitimacy of the right is in the same right, without recourse to anything outside or end to it. Legality and legitimacy are identified.
The natural law is a legal theory that the legitimacy of law is outside itself. It derives from the principles and ethical values. Another name is the theory of justice.
The forms of discrimination that occurred in history were: “Racial discrimination” has been rejected although ethically by most cultures and politically condemned by the UN, is still present in many societies. “Sex discrimination is known well known the hard road traveled by women to to the conquest of their most basic rights. – Discrimination on grounds of ideology, lifestyles or styles of behavior, is exercised in a more subtle and difficult to appreciate. “Some peoples to accept the rule of caste, and the separation was so radical that members of lower castes could not even touch the upper castes.
Bad solutions: 1. Consider that membership of a nation or culture is what defines a person’s dignity. 2. La personal dignity is defined by belonging to a religion or ideology creecias system. 3. Must be forced foreigners to abandon their culture if they are integrated into a nation because we have to defend cultural purity. 4. The dignity of the person lies on their specific characteristics.
Good solution: Human dignity does not come from the cultural, religious or racial, but membership of the human species.