rule-of-law

They criticize me for harping on the obvious; if all the folks in the United States would do the few simple things they know they ought to do, most of our big problems would take care of themselves.

In Confucian thought, individuals practice moral virtue both by restraining themselves and pursuing their own interests. This is a dual push-and-pull process. In today__ China, the latter is taken care of by capitalism and commerce. The former, however, needs to be taken care of by the rule of law. Otherwise, the system of governance is corrupted by unrestrained individual desires and selective enforcement of __irtue_ or law.

At the present time it is widely accepted among lawyers that law is higher than morality__aw is something which is shaped and developed, whereas morality is something inchoate and amorphous. This is not the case. The opposite is true: morality is higher than law! Law is our human attempt to embody in rules a part of that moral sphere which is above us. We try to understand this morality, bring it down to earth, and present it in the form of law. Sometimes we are more successful, sometimes less. Sometimes we have a mere caricature of morality, but morality is always higher than law. This view must never be abandoned.