Thoughtfulness and the Rule of Law

Political theorist Jeremy Waldron makes a bracing case against identifying rule of law with predictability. Seeing the rule of law as just one value to which democracies aspire, he embraces thoughtfulness rather than rote rule-following, flexibility even at the cost of vagueness, and emphasizing procedure and argument over predictable outcomes.

An essential study of the rule of law by one of the world’s leading liberal political and legal philosophers.

For many, the rule of law is the essence of good government. Jeremy Waldron takes a different view, arguing that a relatively thin version of the rule of law is more compatible with goals like democracy, human rights, economic freedom, and social justice.

This timely essay collection is a brief on behalf of thoughtfulness: the intervention of human intelligence in the application of law. Against the claim that thoughtfulness threatens to replace the rule of law with the arbitrary rule of people, Waldron shows that the rule of law in fact requires thoughtfulness. It is impossible to apply a standard such as “reasonableness” on the basis of rules alone, and common legal activities like arguing in court and reasoning from precedents are poorly served by algorithmic logics.

Waldron emphasizes the value of procedure rather than the outcome of legal decisions. A rich compilation, Thoughtfulness and the Rule of Law also addresses the place of law in protecting human dignity, the relation between rule of law and legislation, and whether vagueness in the law is at odds with law’s role in guiding action.

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