The Rule of Law and the Law of the Sea

Abstract

The term ‘rule of law’ is a common jargon which frequently appears in government documents, national laws, literature and media. As defined by Black’s Law Dictionary, the rule of law is ‘a legal principle, of general application, sanctioned by the recognition of authorities, and usually expressed in the form of a maxim or logical proposition’, and ‘the rule of law, sometimes called “the supremacy of law”, provides that decisions should be made by the application of known principles or laws without the intervention of discretion in their application’.1 According to A.V. Dicey, the concept of the rule of law should contain two principles: the supremacy or predominance of regular law (as opposed to the influence of arbitrary power) and equality before the law (or the equal subjection of all classes to the ordinary law of the land administered by the ordinary law courts).2 It can be seen that there are at least two essential elements in the definition of the rule of law: supremacy of law, and equality before the law. While the concept of rule of law is mainly embodied in the domestic legal systems,3 it is recently extended to the international arena for global governance. The United Nations has started its discussions of the rule of law at both national and international levels since 2006. As expressed by the United Nations, ‘the rule of law is a principle of governance in which all persons, institutions and entities, public and private, including the State itself, are