Avraham Avinu's approach to "rule of law"

 A redemptive message
Avraham taught that Hashem is the unique essential existent and is therefore necessarily El Olam: the source of the unified causality presupposed by all research into the systems of the universe. 

Implicit in this general principle of Avraham, lies a core application. This application has many implications which require a long process of reflection, indeed a full scale redemptive process, to become completely acknowledged and worked through. First let us deal with the application of Avraham's principle, then its redemptive implications.

Redemption 2.0
If all processes in the Universe are expressions of a unified causal order, it certainly follows that human life is itself, subject to causality. In fact, human life is a component process that occurs within the dictates of causality of the ecosystem of Earth. 

This insight, that human life must be understood as a special case of causality, has fundamental implications for the concept of "rule of law" in the State. If man is a part of the causal order,we are not free to live in accordance with any law which happens to produce consensus in the State as determined by popular vote, or any other means. Rather, each and every law must stand the test of harmoniously arising from the natural system in which we function.

This imperative to test each law by its consistency with natural Justice demands our best objective Judgement, not the simplistic political pronouncements we are so familiar with, which are no more than first opinions founded in ignorance and prejudice.

To fully implement the principle of natural justice is a transformational process because it contradicts a core convention of man. Law is classically intertwined with custom and ancient consensus about myths and folklore that people are deeply attached to. To educate the population in a dramatically new sense of natural justice is extremely difficult. Yet such is the redemptive mission of Talmud Torah, a study in which each and every law is released from first opinions, in favor of increasingly abstract conceptions. The abstract conceptions form a unified thought system, meeting the most rigorous logical standards. The centrality of this of redemption from first opinions is clearly indicated by the theme of Chumash, which is clearly a narrative which depicts the "sippur yetziat mitzraim" in a series of stories from the Creation of man until Sinai.

Taryag Mitzvot: the final articulation of redemption
Redemption of man reaches it height through the agency of Moshe Rabbenu. It was only the constitutional document of Torat Moshe Rabbenu that could give complete articulation to Avraham Avinu's call for a "rule of law" harmonious with nature. The taryag Mitzvot contain the system of principles, terms as well as the full set of cases and Biblical narratives needed for the ongoing education of the nation. It is the Talmud Torah process that redeems generation after generation of men away from a law of their own preconception and into a divine law organically emerging from discovery of natural processes which allows for a harmonious social system of citizens.

This redemptive sense of taryag was first presented by Moshe Rabbenu in Sefer D'varim and subsequently passed down through the generations until its current formulation by Rambam.