Editor’s Note: The Subjection of Public Power to Law and Its Role in the Legitimacy of the Legal Order

Habibzadeh, Mohammad Jafar

doi:10.22034/jclc.2026.738760

Editor’s Note: The Subjection of Public Power to Law and Its Role in the Legitimacy of the Legal Order

Editor-in-Chief Lecture

Author

Mohammad Jafar Habibzadeh

Tarbiat Modares University-Faculty of Law- Criminal Law Department

10.22034/jclc.2026.738760

Abstract

The rule of law rests upon a proposition at once elementary and demanding: those who exercise public power must themselves be subject to the law. This editorial examines that proposition as a condition of legal and political legitimacy, distinguishing the rule of law from rule by law, under which law functions primarily as an instrument of governmental power rather than as a constraint upon it. Drawing on the accounts of A. V. Dicey, Lon L. Fuller, Joseph Raz, and Brian Tamanaha, it argues that governmental fidelity to law cannot be reduced to formal compliance with legal rules. It also requires public authorities to recognise law as a genuine source of reasons governing the exercise of power and to reject arbitrariness in both decision-making and enforcement. On this account, the subjection of rulers to law is not an optional virtue of good government but an inherent responsibility of any legal order claiming legitimate authority over its subjects.

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