Gianluigi Palombella (University of Parma – Faculty of Law) has posted The Rule of Law and its Core (EUI CONFERENCE ON RELOCATING THE RULE OF LAW, Gianluigi Palombella, Neil Walker, eds., Hart Publishers, 2008) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This article disentangles the “rule of law” from most of its current uses and interprets its potentialities beyond the contingency of existing polities. It refuses its necessary link with a form of State and locates its meaning well outside the unending debate about the morality of the valid law. The article focuses on what the rule of law distinctively is as a concept and as an ideal. This is made through both historical reconstruction and comparative analysis. The core of the rule of law appears to be a peculiar notion, which shows a special objective for the law to achieve.