Lastly, “the Rule of Law” writes Dicey “may be used as a formula for expressing the fact that with us the law of the constitution means the rules, which in foreign countries naturally form part of the constitutional code, are not the sources but the consequences of the rights of individuals as defined and enforced by the courts.”
In England, the rights of private citizens are derived from the Common Law, but they become so only when the courts decide particular cases brought before them by the citizens. For instance, the freedom from arrest by a general warrant was inherent in the Common Law, but it became a right of the citizens when the courts declared the general warrant illegal in the John Wilkes case. In other countries, individual rights are embodied in the constitution as “bill of rights” or “fundamental rights”.
Briefly, the Rule of Law requires that every act of the government and of its servants must conform to law and that a dispute between the government and citizens must be settled according to the law and by a judicial decision of an ordinary court of law. Thus the powers and actions of the government are to be within the law and judicial decision.
The only exception to this rule is the legislative action of Parliament. So, a recent authority, W.I. Jennings, defines the Rule of Law thus: “It is an attitude, an expression of liberal and democratic principles, in them vague when it is sought to analyse them, but clear enough in their results. It is clear, however, that it involves the notion that all governmental powers, save those of the representative legislature, shall be distributed and determined by reasonably precise laws.” The Rule of Law is particularly useful for private citizens in two kinds of State-actions, viz., the punishment of crimes and torts or civil wrongs by public officers.