28/01/2026
"Magna Carta" or The Great Charter.
... Magna Carta, the Latin for The Great Charter, is a foundational 1215 document that established the principle that everyone, including the King, in England, is subject to the law. It was forced upon King John by rebellious barons to limit his power and prevent abuse. It guaranteed specific liberties, such as the right to a fair trial, thereby laying the groundwork for modern constitutional democracy and human rights. "No free man would be imprisoned or stripped of rights without a lawful judgment by his peers or by the law of the land." One of the clause from Magna Carta stipulates.
Then the 17th and 18th centuries, with Enlightenment, introduced the "Social Contract" concept that emphacised the agreement between rulers and citizens to maintain order.
Law and order is the enactment of laws for strict enforcement by police and the courts....
During my college years in Lome, in West Africa, the majority of people in that city and many other towns beyond rebelled against their government. As law and order is a situation in which laws are obeyed and people behave in an organized and peaceful way, protests in the streets obviously led to considerable breach of law and order. Very soon, crime and anarchy became normalized on daily basis. Front pages of newspapers were awash with gory pictures of victims of the subsequent carnage.
The US Congress sent in a strong delegation led by Reverend Jesse Jackson that showed up with a sizeable pile of books at arms' lengths.
Bill Clinton could be the US president then. "You've got to tell our fellow West Africans that in the absence of law and order, we get crime and anarchy..."
These could have been the US president's words for the visiting American delegation in the 1990s.