It’s a nasty state of affairs when national and world leaders come plummeting down due to criminal activity, and depending on our political leanings, it can be personally disappointing as well. We saw, for instance, former Israeli President Moshe Katsav prosecuted earlier this year, and before him, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert investigated and charged more than once for bad acts. And former United States Senator and presidential hopeful John Edwards has recently been indicted for campaign-related misdeeds.

But in a strange way, we can collectively rejoice when it happens, because a prosecution reminds us that we put our laws and our government above the well-being of any one man or woman.

The rule of law, Western-style, is a major factor in separating us from nations in which justice takes a second seat to all sorts of corruption-nepotism, bribery, concealment, and the like. That’s not to say we’re always successful in seeking, finding and prosecuting this conduct; we’re not. Indeed, the growing influence of finances in political campaigns and retention of office, egged on by the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United, is most definitely a step in the wrong direction.

But still, to put no one above the law remains one of the highest aspirations of a civil, democratic state. And nowhere is this doctrine more important than in developing or redeveloping nations, right now in particular the Arab Spring countries in which spite, malice, and chaos abound, all in the name of tyrants clinging to power.

Joe Nocera wrote a brilliant column earlier this week in The New York Times about the rule of law as it relates to Russia. He considers whether it’s alright for the government to jail oligarchs, who have illegally worked the post-Cold War black markets to their own benefit, on trumped-up charges. The result of one such case resulted indirectly in the whisking away of a lawyer helping an oligarch fight his imprisonment at the hand of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s corrupt regime. The lawyer got sick and died in prison without access to medical facilities.

So, as Nocera points out, the absence of the rule of law as a compass “leads the powerful to have troublesome journalists beaten or killed with no consequences. It allows plutocrats to steal companies from shareholders, to jail whistle-blowers, to extort with impunity. The rule of law either applies to everyone or no one. You can’t carve out exceptions.”

This will be the test of many of the Middle Eastern countries now mired in civil strife. Take Syria, for instance. The true colors of President Bashar al-Assad are now unmistakable to his own people as he showers death upon them; no amount of finger-pointing at Israel will do the trick when your own leader is gunning down your friends and family.

Syrians, if their revolt is successful (though grossly violent, not an unfamiliar mark of revolution), may have an opportunity, to choose a path of democratic rule and the resultant elevation of principle over person. Will they do so, or instead elect to subject themselves to continued suppression via tyrannical, thumbscrew rule, by reverting to another Assad? (The King is dead! Long live the King!) While we’re hardly optimistic, at least the possibility of a positive outcome remains.

Each nation’s issues are different from those of its neighbors. Tunisia is and has been a calmer place of transition despite serving as Ground Zero for the foment of change. Egypt is a real tossup, with the moderate influence of the military perhaps to be pitted against the vulgar Muslim Brotherhood as election results unfold (though it was indeed the corruption of President Hosni Mubarak’s government that led in large part to the uprising in the first instance). We can’t apply a one-guess-fits-all analysis to the myriad circumstances surrounding the Arab Spring states.

We don’t know which, if any, nations in the Middle East will embrace the notion of democracy interwoven with civil liberties and economic development. But we can make this blanket statement: The more willing a nation’s populace is willing to incorporate the rule of law into its constitution, statutes, common law, whatever, the more likely we will see that nation value the well being of the populace over the retention of power for a few. And in the long run, that would bode better, not worse, for Israel, the U.S. and the world.