Part I of this book tracks the parameters of the rule of law as a term of art, with a view to determining the scope of its referential field. I aim in these chapters to capture not only the broad set of conceptions and suppositions – political, social, and economic – assumed within the term's ordinary penumbra, but also its historical weight: its role as a battleground for competing conceptions of the good life and as signalling an assumed outcome to those battles.

THE IMMANENT RULE OF LAW

In perhaps its most influential early articulation, drawing on a long tradition of political philosophy and in turn frequently reiterated today, the rule of law appears as a sort of social glue, a connective tissue holding society together. In this picture, a generalised obedience to the law combines with a pervasive legalism in both public and private spheres. The law itself functions in the background, largely internalised and functionally independent of the coercive and administrative power that guarantees its efficacy. Associated with the ‘social fabric’, this rule of law is immanent. It is already present in the everyday interaction of law-abiding citizens. Its reappearance in official and legal processes is the concrete expression of profoundly held principles and habits of thought – but not their source. Legal actors and public officials, in this view, do not arrive at law-sustaining conduct merely by following preassigned rules.