The Rule of Law, Domestic and International

This chapter looks at the domestic rule of law and its uneasy translation to international politics. The central claim is this: the domestic rule of law is in effect when there exists a set of stable public laws binding in theory and practice on both citizens and the state. There are two main lines of debate in existing literature on the domestic rule of law. The first asks whether individual human rights and collective social welfare are effects of the rule of law or constitutive of it. The second debate involves how the rule of law can be distinguished from rule by law, in which the state uses the framework of law instrumentally to legitimate and reinforce its domination. Three claims about the rule of law are constant across these debates: that rules should be public and stable, that rules should apply to the government as well as the citizens, and that the rules should be applied equally across cases. None of these translates easily to the realm of international law. Thus, domestic rule of law provides an unsuitable model for an international equivalent.