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Rule of Law Matters: is it that shocking?
By Kaufmann | May 6, 2008 1 Comment »
The National Townhall meeting on Rule of Law, celebrating the 50th anniversary of Law Day, did take place a few days ago. I was the only non-legal expert in the panel. Apparently that drew some curiosity, as I gather from the American Bar Association (ABA) story here. They write that it takes an economist to point out that Rule of Law matters…
Conversely, the ABA story also mentions that I made an admission (made half in jest; it did get a chuckle from the large audience): that some years back economists did come to the realization that not all economic outcomes resulted from economic determinants. Non-economic factors, such as rule of law, also matter for growth and other economic development results… Oh well, all this has been around for quite a while, and it was also a central issue in the Economist article recently and in the blog commentary.
One issue debated during the Townhall panel was whether one should subscribe to the ‘thin’ or ‘thick’ definition of rule of law (also in the Economist). Some legal scholars in the panel opted for a thinner interpretation, while I warned against the dangers of ‘unjust’ law when subscribing to an ’anorexic’ approach which narrowly interprets rule of law as ‘law and order’. Instead, I argued for a broader interpretation – yet falling short of a definition which would be so ‘fat’ that it becomes a tautological ‘catch all’, and hence useless…
Another debate revolved around the superiority (according to one US legal scholar panelist) of the American legal system over the UK’s, given the US reliance on a written Constitution, and its clearer separation of powers between the various branches in the public sector. From an applied economist standpoint, I indicated that if one looks at the evidence as summarized by empirical indicators, such ’superiority’ is far from evident: in terms of the actual quality of the application of Rule of Law, the UK and the US both rate quite well nowadays, and roughly the same, yet both are a tad below the stellar rating of benchmark countries such as Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Finland, Switzerland and New Zealand (link here to data).
Scholarly de jure distinctions in legal systems do not always translate into significant de facto differences in actual results on the ground. Worldwide experience does not clearly point to the primacy of one particular legal system. In fact desirable societal outcomes may result from a variety of formal legal systems and institutional arrangements, whether it is the US or the UK anglo-saxon common law system, or the scandinavian variant, or some versions of the civil law model. Peering beyond the US at the larger world it becomes apparent that how institutions are led and are (or are not) capable to carry out their functions effectively, and how the rule of law is actually implemented, matters at least as much as particular legal design issues.
Topics: Measurement Frontiers, Rule of Law, Voice and Human Rights | | 1 Comment
May 7th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
It is not surprising that an economist can break through on a Rule of Law panel. Especially an economist who is an expert on the economic and social (political) impacts in the absence of ROL. Actually, Laws are in place in all countries; it is usually the manner of Rule that defines how the Law is applied (or not). Maybe we should be talking more about regimes where the “Law of Rule” is the Rule of Thumb. Sorry to seem flip, but we are way beyond trying to understand the dynamics of ROL. It is clear which regimes are on the right side, and which are still resisting universally accepted rules and laws, i.e. Myanmar in the face of heir recent disaster.
Ronald B. Brinn
Millennium Forum
New York