Allott, Philip --- "The rule of law" [2019] ELECD 239; in d’Aspremont, Jean; Singh, Sahib (eds), "Concepts for International Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) 804

Book Title: Concepts for International Law

Editor(s): d’Aspremont, Jean; Singh, Sahib

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN: 9781783474677

Section: Chapter 53

Section Title: The rule of law

Author(s): Allott, Philip

Number of pages: 11

Abstract/Description:

The human world is constructed from fictions that make social organization possible – evolutionary products of the adaptation of particular societies to changing circumstances. The struggle to prevent law from being merely the tool of governmental power produced the idea of a law transcending all societies and the idea of a constitutionalism that makes law into the ultimate source of all public power within a society. The emergence of so-called states as a dominant fiction at the international level was not matched by the production of controlling constitutive ideas corresponding to those in national societies. The recent emergence at the international level of the traditional constitutional systems of national societies makes an idea of the rule of law in international society both a possibility and a necessity.