NOMOCRACY (Rule of law).
Governance, based on the rule of law, rather than arbitrary will, terror, etc., is technically called NOMOCRACY.

What is its antonym? There is no need to waste time in searching or researching the antonym of nomocracy. We, in India, especially in backward state like Bihar are familiar with a collequal term, close to what we are searching. Mobocracy soon this term should find place in English Dictionaries.

Common man's ordeals  owe imensely to the conflict that result from the hypocrisy which our systems maintain to hide its progressive collapse. Which segment of the state is a major contributor to the increasing dwarfing of the rule of law by its unruly counterpart?  Legislature? Executive? Or Judiciary?

Those who have the inside view and access to the system would take no time to figure out who, how and wherefore. But this is not for public sharing, as it substantiation is not efficacious. All the same, an unsubstantiated inference would merit rejection, worthy of being labelled as a wild outpouring.

As such, a team of law students herein below dedicate their research but are in grief while by adjudging their own stream, the legal system, as the major contributor in promotion of mobocracy and in the simultaneous supplanting of nomocracy, the concept of the rule of law.


In its general sense, the phrase can be traced back to the 16th century, and it was popularized in the 19th century by British jurist A. V. Dicey. The concept was familiar to ancient philosophers such as Aristotle, who wrote "Law should govern".Rule of law implies that every citizen is subject to the law. It stands in contrast to the idea that the ruler is above the law, for example by divine right.
Despite wide use by politicians, judges and academics, the rule of law has been described as "an exceedingly elusive notion" giving rise to a "rampant divergence of understandings ... everyone is for it but have contrasting convictions about what it is."
At least two principal conceptions of the rule of law can be identified: a formalist or "thin" definition, and a substantive or "thick" definition. Formalist definitions of the rule of law do not make a judgment about the "justness" of law itself, but define specific procedural attributes that a legal framework must have in order to be in compliance with the rule of law. Substantive conceptions of the rule of law go beyond this and include certain substantive rights that are said to be based on, or derived from, the rule of law.


Rule according to law; rule under law; or rule according to a higher law.

The rule of law is an ambiguous term that can mean different things in different contexts. In one context the term means rule according to law. No individual can be ordered by the government to pay civil damages or suffer criminal punishment except in strict accordance with well-established and clearly defined laws and procedures. In a second context the term means rule under law. No branch of government is above the law, and no public official may act arbitrarily or unilaterally outside the law. In a third context the term means rule according to a higher law. No written law may be enforced by the government unless it conforms with certain unwritten, universal principles of fairness, morality, and justice that transcend human legal systems.

Rule According to Law

The rule of law requires the government to exercise its power in accordance with well-established and clearly written rules, regulations, and legal principles. A distinction is sometimes drawn between power, will, and force, on the one hand, and law, on the other. When a government official acts pursuant to an express provision of a written law, he acts within the rule of law. But when a government official acts without the imprimatur of any law, he or she does so by the sheer force of personal will and power.

Under the rule of law, no person may be prosecuted for an act that is not punishable by law. When the government seeks to punish someone for an offense that was not deemed criminal at the time it was committed, the rule of law is violated because the government exceeds its legal authority to punish. The rule of law requires that government impose liability only insofar as the law will allow. Government exceeds its authority when a person is held to answer for an act that was legally permissible at the outset but was retroactively made illegal. This principle is reflected by the prohibition against Ex Post Facto Laws in the U.S. Constitution.

For similar reasons, the rule of law is abridged when the government attempts to punish someone for violating a vague or poorly worded law. Ill-defined laws confer too much discretion upon government officials who are charged with the responsibility of prosecuting or persecuting individuals for wrongdoing, whether criminal or civil. Most prosecutorial or persecutional decisions are based on the personal discretion of a government official. Long list of pending writ applications with unending volumes of fresh inpurs would bear testimony to this.

In the above backdrop, the subsequent posts would raise the curtain as to what the justice delivery system, in its existing state, has been contributing to the promotion of mobocracy, at the cost and peril of nomocracy, rule of law.