334. Democracy proceeds on two basic assumptions: (1) popular sovereignty in the sense that the country should be governed by the representatives of the people; that all power came from them; at their pleasure and under their watchful supervision it must be held; and (2) that there should be equality among the citizens in arriving at the decisions affecting them.* 335. Today it is impossible to conceive of a democratic republican form of Government without equality of citizens. It is true that in the republics of Athens and Rome there were slaves who were regarded as chattels. And even in the United States of America there was a republic even before the Negroes were enfranchised. Our Constitution envisages the establishment of a democratic republican form of Government based on adult suffrage. 336. Equality is a multi-coloured concept incapable of a single definition. It is a notion of many shades and connotations. The preamble of the Constitution guarantees equality of status and of opportunity. They are nebulous concepts. And I am not sure whether they can provide a solid foundation to rear a basic structure. I think the types of equality which our democratic republic guarantees are all subsumed under specific articles of the Constitution like Articles 14,15,16,17,25, etc.. and there is no other principle of equality which is an essential feature of our democratic polity. 337. In the opinion of some of the judges constituting the majority in Bharati's case, (AIR 1973 SC 1461) Rule of Law is a basic structure of the Constitution apart from democracy. 338. The rule of law postulates the pervasiveness of the spirit of law throughout the whole range of Government in the sense of excluding arbitrary official action in any sphere. 'Rule of law' is an expression to give reality to something which is not readily expressible. That is why Sir Ivor Jennings said that it is an unruly horse. Rule of law is based upon the liberty of the individual and has as its object, the harmonizing of the opposing notions of individual liberty and public order. The notion of justice maintains the balance between the two; and justice has a variable content. Dicey's formulation of the rule of law, namely, "the absolute supremacy or predominance of regular law, as opposed to the influence of arbitrary power excluding the existence of arbitrariness, of prerogative, even of wide discretionary authority on the part of the Government has been discarded in the later editions of his book. That is because it was realized that it is not necessary that where law ends, tyranny should begin. As Culp Davis said, where the law ends, discretion begins and the exercise of discretion may mean either beneficence or tyranny, either justice or injustice, either reasonableness or arbitrariness. There has been no Government of legal system in world history which did not involve both rules and discretion. It is impossible to find an Government of laws alone and not of men in the sense of eliminating all discretionary powers. All Governments are Governments of laws and of men. Jerome Frank has said: