Nomocracy

Nomocracy (from the Greek nomos the law and kratos power, rule ) is a state rule on the basis of and in accordance with the written laws, which excludes a right to resist. The term originated in the 18th century based on the ancient teachings of the forms of rule. The nomocracy exclude that the arbitrariness of the sovereign on the right is (as in Thomas Hobbes ), or that the regulation of public affairs by a completely free to negotiate different interests comes about.

Although the term is in use since the 17th century, he was also pursued earlier by the idea. So already by Aristotle the saying: "The right to rule " over delivers.

General

More concretely tangible is the rule of law principle in which in the 19th century emerging idea that no authority may act without legal authorization ( prohibition of arbitrariness ). A rigorous nomocracy prompt you with a general submission - both the State as the population - under general rules. So formulated Immanuel Kant:

"Against the legislative head of the state it thus gives no legitimate resistance of the people; because only through submission to his general - legislative will is a legal condition possible; therefore no right of insurrection [ ... ] - The reason the duty of the people to bear one, even the issued intolerable abuse of supreme authority still lies: that its resistance against the highest law itself never otherwise as illegal, even as the whole legal Constitution must be thought zernichtend. Because in order to be entitled to the same, would have a public law be present, which allowed this resistance of the people, di the supreme law contained a provision not to be the top and the people as a Than in and make the same judgments about the sovereign to which it is humbly; which contradicts itself and what the opposition by the question immediately falls into the eyes: who in this dispute between the people and the sovereign should be a judge because ( because there are legally considered always two different moral persons); where then shows that the former wants to be in his own cause. "

So the nomocracy allows a form of ultimate justification of legality. This is but then determined by what may be the legitimate source of positive law. Nomocracy involves the risk of identification of legality and legitimacy and thus the tendency to conclude a purely formal legalism against any decision-making processes in people. So nomocracy was often associated with the actually opposite of rule of autocracy. Since the 19th century, the term nomocracy was supplanted by the term rule of law.

Offensive representative of a nomocracy are Friedrich August von Hayek and James M. Buchanan. Legal and constitutional government are the result nomokratischen endeavor.