Author: Justin Pwavra Teriwajah*
Abstract
Inside and outside academic circles, China is often talked about with respect to the presence or absence of rule of law. Some talk of “rule by law” and not “rule of law” as the most appropriate description of the Chinese situation. To the uninitiated, this may sound like a mere prepositional difference without much significance but to the jurist, this little change of preposition carries a lot of difference in meaning and to some extent, conveys a value-laden concept related to good governance. This paper takes the view that the expression “rule of law” is a multi-layered concept with various strands of meanings and that it is rather simplistic to merely hail or denounce a country as adhering to or not adhering to the rule of law without referring with specificity to the exact strand of rule of law which is the frame of such charge against that polity. I make the case that if there is no specificity as to the particular sense in which the expression “rule of law” is used, it is rather misleading for any polity to be talked about in terms of that expression as far as law enforcement within its territorial borders is concerned.
