The Rule of Law is widely lauded as an important ideal for all nations. Thought to consist of a number of formal conditions (requiring such things as clarity in law’s language, equal application to like cases, and a ban on ex post facto laws), it is also widely seen as value-neutral, taking no stand on the moral character of a nation’s legal system. Indeed, according to many, this neutrality is exactly what suits the Rule of Law to being a universally proper ideal, one that should be adopted by people of wildly divergent political ideologies.

This lecture challenges that view. It argues that both the purpose of law and the means of law’s enforcement make a moral conception of the ideal inescapable. This is important not only for assessing the appeals of nations vying for aid from international organizations, but for knowing when our own government’s actions do and do not respect the Rule of Law. Without understanding the law’s moral authority, we cannot identify what form it should take, and we will not be able to secure the protections of the Rule of Law – protections against the random Rule of Men.