The words of Francisco de Paula Santander, a Colombian military and political leader of the early 19th century, are inscribed high above the Palace of Justice in Bogota: "Weapons have given you independence. Laws will give you freedom." Powerful words by a man who was known as "el hombre de las leyes" (the man of the laws).

But in the two centuries since Santander's sagacity, the rule of law as a categorical social imperative has undergone many transformations, manifested perhaps most vividly in the evolution of legal positivism, which determines the validity of a law not by its merits and morality but by its source of authority. Since the calamitous degeneration of this legal positivism into the Nuremberg Laws of Nazi Germany and their blind and sycophantic application by courts and judges throughout the Third Reich, it has become an established norm of civilized, enlightened society that the authority of good law - law that transcends the mere expression of order - is based not only on the constitutional power to issue and enforce such law, but also on a set of values that embody the indispensable concepts of equality, fairness and liberty.

Ibrahim Mayaki, former prime minister of Niger who today heads the African Union's New Partnership for Africa's Development, once told me about a remarkable opinion poll in Niger that he had carried out during his time in office. In the poll, citizens across the country were asked to name the one single issue that mattered most to them. He expected the list to be topped by concerns such as poverty, crime, safety and security, health and clean water, drug addiction, or access to education.

To his great surprise, however, the one reply that dominated the poll and obliterated all other issues was the rule of law. This vital concept includes equal access to the law as well as equal and predictable application of the law to all the people, irrespective of wealth and status, and the desire to not have some people as "more equal than others" before the law and the courts. It is most critically connected to the need for justice and impartiality and, most fundamentally, to the principle of fairness.

Niger citizens who so unambiguously expressed their desire for the rule of law are not alone. Numerous polls and surveys worldwide have reached the same conclusion. People certainly understand that society does not provide a level playing field for all, and that some are born or become more privileged than others. But nothing makes a person feel more powerless and abandoned than the lack of protection by the law. It is the helplessness expressed so brilliantly by Franz Kafka exactly 100 years ago in his epochal novel The Trial. Instead of enjoying the protection afforded by the rule of law, its absence or misuse will lead from Kafkaesque senselessness and confusion to the loneliest feeling of despair.