Diceyan Rule of Law: A Swaddled Notion of Islamic Legacy

Abstract

The end of the law is, not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.  For, in all the states, where there is no law there is no freedom.  For liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others; which cannot be where there is no law: and is not, as we are told, a liberty for every man to do what he lists. (For who could be free when every other man's humour might domineer over him?) But a liberty to dispose, and order as he lists, his person, actions, possessions, and his whole property, within the allowance of those laws under which he is, and therein not to be the subject of the arbitrary will of another, but freely follow his own.