Equality Under the (Rule of) Law
Date
-
Event Sponsor
The Munro Lectureship Fund and The Lane Center
Speaker
Paul Gowder, Doctoral Candidate, Stanford University
Abstract
In this chapter, I offer a new account of what the rule of law requires of states, and argue that the rule of law responds primarily to the moral-political value of equality, in contrast to the conventional claim that it responds to the value of liberty. The argument is structured in two parts.
First, I defend a “weak version” of the rule of law, which facilitates a vertical equality between officials (police officers, judges, etc.) and ordinary citizens. This equality derives from the way in which the rule of law, by requiring officials to only use the state’s monopoly of violence pursuant to legal rules, explain their use of those rules, and take citizens’ arguments about their application seriously, requires officials to treat citizens with the respect due to equals and forbids officials from using their power to create terror and submissiveness.
Second, I defend a “strong version” of the rule of law, which, by requiring the law be general, additionally facilitates a horizontal equality between ordinary citizens. I first offer an account of what it might mean for a law to be general, then argue that general law serves two egalitarian values: first, it forbids inegalitarian legal castes, and, second, it serves a value of reciprocity between citizens by requiring all to contribute on fair terms to the public good of law and order.
Biography
Paul Gowder is a doctoral candidate with an interest in political theory, political institutions, and American politics. He also holds a JD from Harvard Law School. Paul is currently on the academic job market this year, in both political science and law. His dissertation research is a combined normative/conceptual and positive theoretical approach to the rule of law. Chapters 1 and 2 ask "what is the rule of law, and why do we care?"" In them, he develops a new conception of the rule of law based on the claim that, contrary to the dominant position in the existing literature, it responds not to concerns with citizens' liberty, but with equality, between citizens and officials and between citizens and one another.
Chapter 3 offers a game theoretic approach to the stability of rule of law institutions over time, showing that legal institutions that more fully satisfy the rule of law's egalitarian ambitions are likely to persist. Chapter 4 offers an explanation of the initial formation of egalitarian legal institutions. Chapter 5 offers case studies across history to substantiate the claims of chapters 3 and 4.