Inquiry

7 Democratic Essentials


When Maud de Braose remarked that Prince John may have participated in murder, Prince John confiscated her home and starved Maud and her son to death in his castle dungeon. Prince John of England (1199–1216) made arbitrary rules.

When he tried to rescue a baby bison in 2016 at Yellowstone Park in Wyoming, Shanash Kassam of Brossard, Quebec, was fined $235 and ordered to donate $500 to the park's wildlife protection fund. Sean Steele, an Alberta farmer, was praised when he performed an emergency C-Section on a doe beside the highway and rescued her fawn in BC in 2016. What is the right thing to do? How do people know when it is good to save an animal's life or to leave it alone?  Are laws too vague? Can laws be made for different situations that make sense?

These questions are addressed by the Seven Key Principles of Democracy.

What are Seven Key Principles of Democracy?



  1. The law must be clear and understood by everyone. 
  2. The law should not be arbitrary or unpredictable.  It should have a reason to exist.

  3. Everyone is under the law including the leaders. 
  4. Everyone is equal under the law. 
  5. The people who make the laws do not have a blank check to make whatever laws they want. If the society can remove a leader from power, the society is democratic.
  6. The state should provide a fair trial.
  7. A defendant in a trial should know what the case is against him or her. The judge should not receive private material about the case that the defendant (or lawyer for the defendant) cannot see.