Bulldozer Justice: ‘The Rule BY Law’, Instead of ‘The Rule OF Law’

A bulldozer plows across the remains of a home
This scene was created by affordablehousingaction.org and is licensed under CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication

This post offers a perspective on ‘The Right To Adequate Housing’ and what it might mean as a legal term when a country accepts it as a right as part of its constitution.

Such a situation exists in present-day India, a country with a constitution that clearly recognizes that all its citizens have a right to adequate housing. In spite of this, governments are finding ways to thwart those rights.

The following article provides a brief history of the term rule of law:

“A.V. Dicey was a constitutional jurist in 18th century Britain who popularised the phrase ‘rule of law’. The rule indicates that no one is above the law and that the law should be equally applied to everyone.”

As construed, the rule of law was, and is, meant to safeguard every citizen from rule by law, through which the powerful might impose their will and their interests upon others. India is currently seeing incidents in which the housing of some citizens, in spite of their constitutional rights, have been bulldozed on shallow pretexts, which the Punjab and Haryana High Court queried as a possible ” . . . exercise of ethnic cleansing.”

The enthusiasm with which governments in other jurisdictions may rule by law might lead some to query their motives. ‘Ethnic cleansing’ may well apply in some cases. Far more likely, however, are thinly disguised attempts to treat the unhoused as worthy of prejudicial treatment simply for the sin of falling into poverty.

An alternate and certainly more expressive way of expressing dislike of rule by law has come to called ‘Bulldozer Justice.’ Read more about Constitutional Law, The Right To Adequate Housing, and ‘Bulldozer Justice’ in THE WIRE: The Unconstitutionality of ‘Bulldozer Justice’