This course aims to enable first year students to comprehend the creation of the contemporary Rule of Law, by analysing the historical evolution of political ideas, on the one hand, together with the study of its structuring legal concepts. Regarding the former, students study fundamental authors of political thought, from Classical Antiquity to the present – with a particular emphasis on the Enlightenment –, in search of the origin of such ideas as State, democracy, sovereignty, equality, separation of powers, fundamental rights, citizenship, social justice or sustainability. Simultaneously, in a second approach, students analyse the way in which these same ideas are encapsulated in the law, in the form of rules or principles, in the constitutional texts in force and, in particular, in the Portuguese Constitution of 1976.