12.What is the "rule of law"?
12.什么是“法治”？
Answer: Everyone must follow the law; Leaders must obey the law; Government must obey the law; No one is above the law
答案：每个人都必须守法；无论是领导人还是政府部门都要守法；没有人能凌驾于法律之上
Explanation: More than 800 years ago, in a city in England, a group of men got together to create a new kind of government.
解释：八百多年前，在英国某座城市，一群人聚集一起创建了一种新型政府。
At the time, England was ruled by a king, but the king did not follow the same laws as the rest of the people.
英国那时由君主统治，但君主与其余的人遵守的法律不相同。
So these men wrote a document called the Magna Carta, which said that the king must obey (or follow) the same laws as everyone else.
因此这些人撰写了名为《大宪章》的法律文件，里面规定君主与其他人一样必须遵守相同的法律。
This idea we now call "the rule of law."
如今我们称这样的思想为“法治”。
Many years later, in 1787, the people who drafted (or planned in writing) the Constitution used the Magna Carta as part of its system of government for the new United States.
多年以后，在1787年，起草宪法的人把《大宪章》作为新的美国政府体系的一部分。
These people believed in a government for the people and by the people (or a government created and run by American citizens),
这些人认为政府应该由美国公民创建和领导，
so the rule of law was put in place (or established) to protect against totalitarianism (or a type of government in which almost everything is controlled by the government) or against mob rule (control of the government by a large group of people, usually using violence to get power).
因此用“法治”来防止极权主义（或者说是一种几乎一切事情都由政府控制的政府)和暴民统治(政府由一大群人控制，他们通常使用暴力夺权）。
译文为秀哈英语翻译，未经授权请勿转载！
