Political definitions and formulae often give rise to different theories. Jean Bodin's understanding of ‘political authority’ in his Les Six Livres De La Republique (1577), was this kind of study. As already shown, he defined a sovereign as someone capable of rising above the conflicting interests of society, and law as ‘nothing else than the command of the sovereign’. The later definition gave rise to the tradition of legal positivism. The debate which followed in the wake of this tradition, in turn, resulted in the quest for a set of fundamental values; a moral understanding of the rule of law, able to protect the general welfare of all people, without capitulating to the partisan demands of any one group and worthy of being a basis for effectual rule. The outcome was two different perceptions of law as discussed in Chapter. In what follows attention is given to the values which have come to shape the moral understanding of law, and more especially the human rights debate as a basis for law-making.

Human rights, as we understand the concept today, emerged as part of a slowly evolving process, part of an idea whose time had come. Magna Carta had already been signed in England in 1215. The Petition of Rights followed four centuries later in 1628, and after the Glorious Revolution came the Bill of Rights in 1689. Almost a hundred years later, in 1791, came the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution, making America the first state to be ruled in submission to a constitution which defines human rights ‘as the basis and foundation of government’.