Our aims in this Article are both critical and constructive. They are critical
in that we methodically unpack the assumptions of the scholarly literature to
reveal the shortcomings described above. We do not see the rule of law as
inevitably flawed, as a vacuous Rorschach test upon which legal scholars and
reformers simply project their own views about the content and purpose of law.
Rather, we see the rule of law as expressing a worthy aspiration that rightly
finds voice in the hard work of good-intentioned activists. The essential
predicament in the current practice of rule-of-law reformism is that the concept
of the rule of law rests on unstated and under-explicated assumptions.