Law is the expression of the general will. Every citizen has a right to participate personally or through his representative in its foundation. It must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes. Those are radical ideas, that laws come from citizens, not from kings or gods, and that those laws should apply to everyone equally? That's a long way from Hammurabi, and in truth it's a long way from the slaveholding Thomas Jefferson. In the 1970s, Chinese President Zhou Enlai was asked what he thought the effects of the French Revolution had been, and he said, it's too soon to say. And in a way, it still is.