Research On Lo Lung-chi's Thought Of Rule Of Law

Lo Lung-chi (1896 ~ 1965) who styled himself as Lu Shen and Nu Sheng, is a famous political activist and patriotic democratic personage in the modern time of china. His political thought had reached the peak during the period of Human Rights Movement. By argued with the KMT government, Lo found the unique theory of human rights, democracy, rule of law, and the related article was published in the magazine called New Moon.The current academic research on Lo Lung-chi is not in-depth, no one has systematically expounded his thought of rule of law. This paper attempts to organize and analyze Lo Lung-chi's thought of rule of law based on previous studies. The paper is divided into three parts.The first part briefly outlines the context of ideological formation about Lo Lung-chi's thought of rule of law.In early time, Lo Lung-chi was educated in Tsinghua, either in school or life out of class was full of strong America style. In Tsinghua, Lo not only learned a lot about western culture, but also highly influenced by the thought of Western freedom, rule of law, democracy. He was well known and had profound impact on Tsinghua by led the May Fourth Movement, organized students to drive three presidents out of the school, and demanded reorganize the board of trustees. After graduate from Tsinghua, Lo studied abroad in U.S. and UK, where gave him more exposure to the advanced concepts of Western democracy and rule of law. The study experience that followed Laski played an important role in Lo′s political life, for many of his views and opinions about law and national were directly from Laski. After returned to motherland,Lo found the nation was lack of human rights and law ,he began attack KMT, and finally formed his own thought of the rule of law by debated with KMT.In the second part, the content of Lo's thought of rule of law is analyzed.Confront to internal revolt and foreign invasion, Lo initially focused on criticizing the criminal violations that KMT deprived the human rights of nationals. He appealed human rights ,and demanded drawing up a constitution or provisional constitution to protect the personal safety, freedom of speech, property safety of common nationals, he cherished illusion that human rights can be protect by law. Not until the KMT arrested him and promulgated the Provisional Constitution of Political Tutelage Period did Lo realize that the most pressing trouble of the society was not the lack of law to protect human rights but rule of law.To Lo Lung-chi,the rule of law requires constitution drawn up under the participation of the people,demands judicial independence and the party in powder abided by law,so that the function of the rule of law is to protect human rights,to achieve the goal that all citizens can be procure common good and also to make sure the objective,function,development of the nation can be realized. Without the rule of law,human rights protect would be empty talk and common good for all people cannot be realized.Lo Lung-chi accused the guiding principles of Party Dictatorship which means Party Override the Country,Party Dictatorship and Party Member Running the Country seriously go against the principle and function of the rule of law ,and it hindered the realization of the rule of law. Party Dictatorship is the root cause of social problems in the system. He believed ,contrary to Party Dictatorship,Rule By People can reflect the principle of the rule of law, meanwhile, realize the function that protect human rights and make sure all people gain common good. So, Lo proposed abolishing Party Dictatorship and carrying out Government by the People.The third part mainly analyzes the characteristics and difficult position for practice of Lo Lung-chi's thought of rule of law, then evaluates its historical value.The starting point of Lo Lung-chi's thought of rule of law was to protect human rights, human rights and sovereignty were two core values that the thought to pursue; Lo's thought of the rule of law was utilitarianism, this kind of utilitarianism ran through every aspects of his thought of rule of law; Lo's thought of rule of law paid more attention to acquire political rights, because he believed that the realization of political rights is the real guarantee for all of other rights and it is the key point of the rule of law.Lo Lung-chi's thought was destiny to fail in practice, both because the weak foundation of rule of law, his mistake in theory development and the political way he chose. It was a pity and had no choice for Lo's thought of rule of law did not put into practice in that era,but the abundant value it contained becomes wealth and experience in the current era.