Faculty Publications

This book explores the development of both the civil law conception of the Legal State and the common law conception of the Rule of Law. It examines the philosophical and historical background of both concepts, as well as the problem of the interrelation between the two doctrines. The book brings together twenty-five leading scholars from around the world and provides both general and specific jurisdictional perspectives of the issue in both contemporary and historical settings. The Rule of Law is a legal doctrine the meaning of which can only be fully appreciated in the context of both the common law and the European civil law tradition of the Legal State (Rechtsstaat). The Rule of Law and the Legal State are fundamental safeguards of human dignity and of the legitimacy of the state and the authority of state prescriptions.

Twenty-five years ago Batson v. Kentucky held that equal protection is violated when attorneys exercise racially discriminatory peremptory jury challenges and supply pretextual explanations for their strikes. Findings of Batson violations are tantamount to rulings that attorneys have discriminated and lied. Not only do Batson findings potentially subject violators to sanction under standards of professional ethics, but they also amount to imputations of personal fault or “blame” for socially undesirable conduct. This article explores, from both practical and theoretical perspectives, the problem of the attribution of personal fault to attorneys that is inherent in a finding of a Batson violation. On the practical side, although the blaming effect seems inevitable, it may prove counterproductive to Batson‘s goal of eliminating racial discrimination in jury selection. In terms of constitutional theory, Batson enforces the Constitution’s equal protection guarantee, and blame appears to be an inexorable consequence of either of the two dominant theories of equal protection analysis: “anticlassification” theory, used by the Supreme Court’s majority, and “antisubordination” theory, urged by Supreme Court dissenters and many academics. Assuming blame is unavoidable under either current theory, and yet that it interferes with rooting out discrimination, this Essay explores a third possible alternative view of equal protection — “antibalkanization” — which might resolve the problem of discriminatory peremptory strikes without necessarily implicating personal blame.

This new volume on The Rule of Law in Comparative Perspective compares the different conceptions of the rule of law that have developed in different legal cultures. Lawyers and legal scholars from various legal systems describe the social purposes and practical applications of the rule of law, and how it might be improved in the varied circumstances of their own courts and politics.This book will be of interest to lawyers, judges, public officials, and to all those wishing to improve the fundamental structures of their own legal systems, by bringing equal justice to every person subject to the power of the state.