Concept

Equality before the law

Overview

Equality before the law, known as equality under the law, equality in the eyes of the law, legal equality, or legal egalitarianism, is the principle that all people must be equally protected by the law. The principle requires a systematic rule of law that observes due process to provide equal justice and requires equal protection ensuring that no individual nor group of individuals is privileged over others by the law. Also called the principle of isonomy, it arises from various philosophical questions concerning equality, fairness and justice. Equality before the law is one of the basic principles of some definitions of liberalism. The principle of equality before the law is incompatible with and does not exist within systems incorporating legal slavery, servitude, colonialism, oligarchy, aristocracy, or absolute monarchy.

Article 7 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states: "All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law". Thus, it states that everyone must be treated equally under the law regardless of race, gender, color, ethnicity, religion, disability, or other characteristics, without privilege, discrimination or bias. The general guarantee of equality is provided by most of the world's national constitutions, but specific implementations of this guarantee vary. For example, while many constitutions guarantee equality regardless of race, only a few mention the right to equality regardless of nationality.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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Nor is it otherwise in the family. The subjection of women to men, complete while war is habitual but qualified as fast as peaceful occupations replace it, comes eventually to be thought wrong, and equality before the law is asserted. At the same time the opinion concerning paternal power changes.
Herbert Spencer, The Data of Ethics
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Sect. 160. This power to act according to discretion, for the public good, without the prescription of the law, and sometimes even against it, is that which is called prerogative: for since in some governments the lawmaking power is not always in being, and is usually too numerous, and so too slow, for the dispatch requisite to execution; and because also it is impossible to foresee, and so by laws to provide for…
John Locke, Second Treatise of Government
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Sometimes what is called the constitution of the state, that is, the interest of the government; sometimes of the interest of particular orders of men who tyrannize the government, warp the positive laws of the country from what natural justice would prescribe. In some countries, the rudeness and barbarism of the people hinder the natural sentiments of justice from arriving at that accuracy and precision which, in…
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments
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Philosophers who discussed Equality before the law

Related ideas

Opposing perspectives

Constitutional law

Place in the tradition

Part of Liberalism.

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