These are the Days of our Bureaucracies

The Rule of Law, or Law by Rule?

There is a difference—a profound and increasingly dangerous difference—between the rule of law, which everyone claims to support, and what we are increasingly living under: the law of rule.

The rule of law is uncomplicated. It says that the people, through their elected representatives, make the laws. The legislature codifies the people’s will, agencies implement and carry out those laws, and the courts, when necessary, interpret them, bounded by statute, legislative intent, and the constitution. Governing authority rises up from the people, and the people can take it back.

It’s a pretty cool system of government, if I do say so myself.

The law of rule is something else entirely. In that system, the bureaucracy writes the rules, interprets them, and then enforces them with the effect and force of law. In this system, the people do not govern. They comply.

https://www.maciverinstitute.com/perspectives/these-are-the-days-of-our-bureaucracies