When Law Ceases to Be a Limit: Animal Farm and Orwell’s Warning to the Rule of Law

 

When Law Ceases to Be a Limit: Animal Farm and Orwell’s Warning to the Rule of Law

by: Joana Capaz Coelho

Published in 1945, Animal Farm, by George Orwell, is often read as a satire of the Russian Revolution, but its true strength lies in the fact that it transcends that historical framework and asserts itself as a timeless reflection on power, its corruption, and the fragility of the legal structures that are meant to restrain it.

The narrative begins with a diagnosis of structural injustice: “our lives are miserable, laborious, and short”, declares Old Major, denouncing an order in which “the produce of our labour is stolen by human beings”. The revolt that follows is not presented as “a mere impulse” of ideology, but as a reaction to a situation of exploitation and inequality, grounded in an ideal that appears unassailable: “All animals are equal”. This proclamation functions as the normative foundation of the new community, a kind of “constitutional principle” that promises equality, dignity, and distributive justice.

After the expulsion of Mr. Jones (the owner of the Farm), the animals seek to organize themselves according to their own rules, establishing the Seven Commandments, painted on the barn wall, which synthesize the values of the revolution and function as a kind of legal foundation of the new order. At the same time, they institute the Sunday meetings, conceived as a space for collective deliberation, where all may vote and decide the course of the farm. These two elements — the Commandments as a “normative body” and the meetings as a mechanism of participation — represent, in legal terms, the pillars of an embryonic model of the rule of law: general rules, publicly known, and decisions taken with the involvement of the community. For a brief moment, the farm seems to demonstrate that self-government, grounded in cooperation and equality, is possible.

However, Orwell shows that the solidity of a system does not depend solely on the proclamation of principles, but on the existence of effective safeguards capable of preventing the concentration of power. The violent expulsion of Snowball, carried out by Napoleon with the aid of the dogs he had secretly raised, marks the first major institutional rupture: disagreement is no longer resolved through debate, but eliminated by force. Shortly thereafter, the Sunday meetings are suspended under the argument that they are a waste of time and that management should be entrusted to a restricted committee of pigs. Collective deliberation becomes a symbolic ritual, limited to the raising of the flag and the singing of “Beasts of England,” while real decisions are communicated as faits accomplis. Political participation is hollowed out without being formally abolished, and power gradually concentrates in a single figure.

The moment when the Commandments begin to be altered reveals, perhaps even more clearly, the degradation of the system. The Sixth Commandment, which had categorically stated “No animal shall kill any other animal”, later appears with a decisive addition: “without cause”. Two words introduced without debate, without vote, and without transparency are enough to legitimize executions and internal purges. The law is not eliminated; it is silently modified. The barn wall continues to display norms, but their content no longer functions as a limit on power and instead adapts to its needs. This mechanism — maintaining the form of legality while altering its meaning — is one of the most subtle and dangerous features of the erosion of the rule of law, as it creates the illusion of normative continuity while, in practice, expanding the scope of arbitrariness.

The manipulation of language plays a decisive role in this process. Squealer, the regime’s spokesperson, resorts to fallacious arguments and the constant invocation of fear — “Surely, comrades, you do not want Jones back?” — to justify each controversial decision. Fear replaces contradiction; loyalty replaces criticism. When the anthem “Beasts of England” is banned on the grounds that the revolution has already been completed, this is not merely cultural censorship, but an attempt to control collective memory and erase reference to the original ideals. Without memory, comparison between promise and reality becomes impossible; and without comparison, critical awareness weakens.

As power consolidates, a cult of personality emerges around Napoleon, portrayed as the source of prosperity and protection, while any failure is attributed to external enemies or internal traitors. The famous reformulation of the founding principle — “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” — crystallizes the perversion of the initial ideal, transforming equality into a rhetorical statement that conceals a rigid hierarchy. The phrase, seemingly “absurd”, juridically translates the institutionalization of inequality and the normalization of privileges incompatible with any serious conception of equality before the law.

What makes Animal Farm particularly disturbing is the gradual way in which this transformation occurs. There is no single moment of absolute rupture; there are successive small changes, justified by reasons of efficiency, security, or necessity. The exception becomes the rule, and the rule adapts to the exception. The animals, initially uneasy, eventually accept each change as inevitable. Law does not disappear when it is violated once; it weakens when the violation ceases to cause indignation and becomes integrated as part of normality. Orwell’s work reminds us that the rule of law is sustained not only by normative texts, but by a culture of civic vigilance, effective participation, and a constant demand for accountability.

More than a dated political allegory, Animal Farm remains a warning about how easily equality can be instrumentalized, law can be molded, and institutions can be hollowed out when power ceases to recognize limits external to itself. Democracy is not lost only through noisy coups; it can dissolve slowly, through discreet adjustments and the progressive acceptance of the unacceptable.

 As the German politician Sigmar Gabriel, former Vice-Chancellor of Germany, declared in 2017: “Those who fall asleep in a democracy may one day wake up in a dictatorship”!