The Rule of Law

Foundation of Constitutional Democracy

by Geoffrey De Q. Walker

Melbourne University Press, 1988, [First Edition], hardcover, dustjacket, ISBN 0522843476

Near Fine Condition, minor edge and shelf wear, dust-jacket has sunning to spine

'In recent years the rule of law doctrine as a practical working institution has suffered from the attacks of two groups of critics or policy-makers.  One group sees it as an obstacle to social progress and the benevolent exercise of power, and would like to subordinate it to other values.  The other group, whose members would consider themselves supporters of the rule of law, has mistakenly tended to equate it with mere law and order.  They have proposed retrospective laws, reversal of the burden of proof and other measures that undermine the rule of law, in the mistaken belief that they are helping to uphold it.
The author argues that the survival of any useful rule of law model is currently threatened by distortions in the adjudication process, by the perversion of law enforcement (through the fabrication of evidence and other means), by the excessive production of new legislation with its degrading effect on long-term legal certainty and on long-standing safeguards, and by legal theories that are hostile to the very concept of the rule of law.  In practice these trends have produced a great number of legal failures and abuses from which we must learn.'