The Secretary-General of the United Nations defines the rule of law as:[70] On the other hand, Joseph Raz (1979 [1977]:211) is famous for insisting that « the rule of law is only one of the virtues that a legal system can possess and by which it must be judged » and that we should not try to read in other considerations of democracy. Human rights and social justice. These considerations, he said, are best understood as independent dimensions of evaluation. Tom Bingham said it in his book on the rule of law in response to Raz: Lon Fuller believed that government, in accordance with the forms and procedures of law, had a distinctive value that could help bridge the gap between positive law on the one hand and morality and justice on the other. The conventional wisdom of legal positivists was that laws could be impeccably formulated and administered uniformly and were still terribly unjust: the pre-war slave law in the United States and the apartheid law in South Africa were often cited as examples. But Fuller believed that, for reasons of political psychology, there would be a reluctance to use forms of law—general and public norms—to embody and inscribe injustice. He believed that « consistency and kindness had more affinity than coherence and evil, » he believed that bad things happened in the dark, as opposed to the sunlight of legality, and he asserted that « even in the most evil regimes there is a certain hesitation in inscribing cruelty, intolerance and inhumanity in the law » (Fuller 1958: 636-7). Concept in the sense of five (different) « objectives » of the rule of law: U.S. Army doctrine and U.S. Army doctrine The Interinstitutional Agreement of the Government (SGA) could consider the rule of law as a principle of governance[60] A country that adheres to the rule of law ensures that: – Bentham, Jeremy | Constitutionalism | Hayek, Friedrich | Law: and ideology| Liberalism | Limitations of the | law Nature of the right | Nature of Law: Legal Positivism Although certain institutional traditions and conventions, as well as written laws, may be important in ensuring that judicial decisions are based on plausible interpretations of existing laws, no single institutional character of a State should be considered necessary or sufficient for the ideal of the rule of law. The rule of law is not linked to national experience or to a number of specific institutions, although it may be better served in some countries and by some institutions.

Moreover, institutional arrangements that ensure the rule of law in one community could not easily be replicated or transferred to another. Different political regimes embody their own judgments about how to implement specific constitutional ideals in light of their particular legal and cultural traditions, which naturally influence the character of their institutions. Nevertheless, the sociological starting point of the rule of law is shared by all cultures: for the rule of law to be more than an empty principle, most people in a society, even those whose profession is to administer the law, must believe that no individual or group should be above the law. This emphasis on the value of complexity—the ways in which complicated laws, particularly property laws, provide protections under which people can find shelter from the intrusive demands of power—has continued to fascinate modern theorists of the rule of law (e.g., Thompson 1975: 258-69). In China, members of the school of legalism in the 3rd century BC advocated the use of law as a tool of governance, but they promoted « authority by law » as opposed to « rule of law, » meaning they placed aristocrats and the emperor above the law. [15] In contrast, the Taoist Huang Lao school rejected legal positivism in favor of a natural law to which even the ruler would be subject. [16] A resource for leading organizations, model programs, rule of law information, and more. Sometimes situations can be resolved and disputes resolved through informal social norms rather than through officially promulgated and enforced positive law (Ellickson 1994). Opinions differ as to whether this should be seen as something quite different from the rule of law. On the one hand, it looks like a real alternative, and there is little to be gained by adapting its desirable characteristics, such as they are, to the requirements of the rule of law. On the other hand, it has something in common with customary conceptions of law and ideas of the rule of law (such as Hayek`s in 1973), which attempt to separate themselves from enactment and legislation.