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An Autocracy is a state/government in which one person possesses "unlimited power". A Totalitarian state is "based on subordination of the individual to the state and strict control of all aspects of the life and productive capacity of the nation especially by coercive measures (such as censorship and terrorism)".
In the period of the eighteenth century, usually called the Enlightenment, a new justification of the European state developed.Jean-Jacques Rousseau's social contract theory states that governments draw their power from the governed, its 'sovereign' people (usually a certain ethnic group, and the state's limits are legitimated theoretically as that people's lands, although that is often not ...
The Public and Its Problems is a 1927 book by American philosopher John Dewey.In his first major work on political philosophy, Dewey explores the viability and creation of a genuinely democratic society in the face of the major technological and social changes of the 20th century, and seeks to better define what both the 'public' and the 'state' constitute, how they are created, and their ...
Kant had thus formulated the main problem of constitutionalism, “The constitution of a state is eventually based on the morals of its citizens, which, in its turns, is based on the goodness of this constitution.” [citation needed] Kant's idea is the foundation for the constitutional theory of the twentieth century.
Political ethics (also known as political morality or public ethics) is the practice of making moral judgments about political action and political agents. [1] It covers two areas: the ethics of process (or the ethics of office), which covers public officials and their methods, [2] [3] and the ethics of policy (or ethics and public policy), which concerns judgments surrounding policies and laws.
In Raz's view, one of the virtues of the rule of law is the restraint it imposes on authorities. It aims to exclude arbitrary power, as most of the exercises of arbitrary power violate the rule of law. Arbitrary power is excluded when courts hold themselves accountable only to the law and observe "fairly strict procedures".
An arbitrary legal judgment is a decision made at the discretion of the judge, not one that is fixed by law. [7] [1] In some countries, a prohibition of arbitrariness is enshrined into the constitution. Article 9 of the Swiss Federal Constitution theoretically overrides even democratic decisions in prohibiting arbitrary government action. [8]
"Consent of the governed" is a phrase found in the 1776 United States Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson.. Using thinking similar to that of John Locke, the founders of the United States believed in a state built upon the consent of "free and equal" citizens; a state otherwise conceived would lack legitimacy and rational-legal authority.