2. EQUALITY BEFORE LAW- AN OVERVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL AND DOMESTIC LEGAL DOCUMENTS 2.1‘ALL ARE EQUAL BEFORE THE LAW’ – THE PRINCIPLE. ‘Equality before the law’ is an ancient principle, which is of vital importance in all democratic constitutional orders. Almost every constitution worldwide, and international legal order as well, recognize this as a principle of foremost importance. However, the principle that‘everyone is equal before the law’ is differently understood in the political, academic, or public discourse. Equality before the law has at least two fundamentally different meanings.“On the one hand, it pertains to the rights and duties contained in positive law, i.e., the content of the law, and mandates something like the absence of certain distinctions in the distribution of these”. 0F 1 On the other hand, the principle upholds that the laws should apply equally to all citizens: in other words, no one is above the law. As Friedrich Hayek has put it,“the great aim of the struggle for liberty has been equality before the law” 1F 2 . This pertains to the practices of the courts, police officers, ministries,- the application without distinction of law by all law enforcement agencies. Even for the prominent positivist legal theorist Hans Kelsen, there is no other meaning of the notion beyond this."The particular principle[of so-called equality before the law] means nothing else than that the judicial institutions shall make no distinction, which the applicable law does not itself make". 2F 3 To make a distinction between the two meanings, we can label the former as‘equality in the law’ 3F 1 or the content of the law, which is not of specific interest in this policy paper. The concept of equality before the law we will focus on is rather procedural. We will see 1 Frej Klem Thomsen,"Concept, Principle, and Norm-Equality before the Law Reconsidered." Legal Theory 24, no. 2(2018): 3. 2 Freidrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty , Chicago: University of Chicago Press,(1960): 127. 3 Hans Kelsen:“[The particular principle of so-called equality before the law] means nothing else than that the judicial institutions shall make no distinction, which the applicable law does not itself make[...] This principle has hardly anything to do with equality. It states only that the law shall be applied as it is meant to be applied. It is the principle of legitimacy or legality, which is immanent in the essence of any legal order, regardless of whether this order is just or unjust”. Quoted from Thomsen, Frej Klem.“Concept, principle, and norm— Equality before the law reconsidered.” Legal Theory 24, no. 2(2018), 3. 1 Frej Klem Thomsen,“Concept, Principle, and Norm-Equality before the Law Reconsidered”, 3. 7