Business Ethics and Corporate Governance, Second Edition

POLITICAL GOVERNANCE REQUIRES RESTRAINTS OF POWER

Constitutional governments are characterized by specific restraints established by law and imposed on power-holders to ensure that citizens’ rights are not being transgressed. Constitutionalism embodies the principles that the government is organized by, and operated on behalf of the people, but subject to a series of restraints, a system of checks and balances and to keep power from being abused. By dividing power, constitutionalism provides a system of restraints upon coercive state action.

The basic idea underpinning restraints rests on the notion of a law higher than positive man-made law, and thus limiting the operation of the state. Natural law provides a criterion by which positive laws ...