Varieties of Legal Secularism

Abstract

The desirability of global extension of the rule of law is currently being promoted by political actors across the ideological spectrum. At times, rhetorical evocation of the rule of law takes on a transcendent Utopian glow—as of an entire philosophy and practice sufficient for the peaceful coexistence of humankind. Universal law as the successor, one might say, to universal religion. This is a somewhat startling image for those of us who are lawyers—or who study law—and find it as violent, as historically messy, and as genealogically compromised, as any other human institution. Yet, the rule of law as the very essence of the secular, the a-cultural, the a-political, continues to operate in many places as a stand-in for the last best hope for mankind.