<P> Among the first modern authors to use the term and give the principle theoretical foundations was Samuel Rutherford in Lex, Rex (1644). The title, Latin for "the law is king", subverts the traditional formulation rex lex ("the king is law"). John Locke also discussed this issue in his Second Treatise of Government (1690): </P> <P> The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule . The liberty of man, in society, is to be under no other legislative power, but that established, by consent, in the commonwealth; nor under the dominion of any will, or restraint of any law, but what that legislative shall enact, according to the trust put in it . Freedom then is not what Sir Robert Filmer tells us, Observations, A. 55 . a liberty for every one to do what he lists, to live as he pleases, and not to be tied by any laws: but freedom of men under government is, to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, where the rule prescribes not; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man: as freedom of nature is, to be under no other restraint but the law of nature . </P> <P> The principle was also discussed by Montesquieu in The Spirit of the Laws (1748). The phrase "rule of law" appears in Samuel Johnson's Dictionary (1755). </P> <P> In 1776, the notion that no one is above the law was popular during the founding of the United States . For example, Thomas Paine wrote in his pamphlet Common Sense that "in America, the law is king . For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other ." In 1780, John Adams enshrined this principle in the Massachusetts Constitution by seeking to establish "a government of laws and not of men ." </P>

Constitutional government - the rule of law is an essential component