Help me write my essay!

Miscellaneous Newbies
1

I need to write an essay about one of the following topics:

  1. Political Parties
    ‘Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right.’ - H. L. Mencken
    Assess the health of democracy through an analysis of political parties in Australia.

  2. Lobby Groups and Voters
    ‘Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.’ - HL Mencken
    Assess the health of democracy by examining the extent of lobby group influence over politics. Does money buy influence?

  3. Democracy and the Rule of Law
    “A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.” - HL Mencken
    Examine the implications of democracy for the rule of law.

The first two are easy. For the first, I can talk about how the major parties have basically the same policies (and ground this in a discussion of median voter theory). For the second, I can talk about public choice theory. I’m stumped about how to approach the third question however!

2

Have you read Bruno Leoni’s Freedom and the Law? It talks a lot about the meaning of freedom and the rule of law. As for democracy, perhaps you could argue that, since laws can be changed by the (representatives of the) majority, the ‘rule of law’ is ultimately the rule of the majority - or at least the rule of those who claim to represent the majority (of which the judge in the Mencken quote could be an example).

Where are you studying? Are these actual essay questions set by a university? The emphasis on Mencken is unexpected.