Naked and brutal. Rhetoric to the contrary is mere sophistry, intended to quiet the murmuring of gullible peasants. All laws are made, in the end, by governments.
Legality becomes a fiction.
Laws become the instrument of tyranny. History is replete with brutal, bloody examples. The world witnessed Josef Stalin's use of show trials in the 1930s to destroy his opponents. During Soviet collectivization of Ukrainian farmers in the early 1930s, Stalin seized grain and sold it on world markets in order to raise cash for the rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union. Adolf Hitler came to power by legal means in 1933, when German President Paul von Hindenburg invited him to form a coalition government following an election that Hitler did not win.