Lawyers often speak of equality before the law. They do so not just under the influence of the many
constitutional and related provisions which affirm that notion and its cognates. The influence of the law‟s own
understanding of itself, as revealed in commentaries about particular segments of legal doctrine and reflection
upon the nature of law in general, also leads lawyers to regard the notion as significant. The same is true of
equality under the law: we lawyers speak of this notion almost as often as the idea of equality before the law,
even though equality under the law is perhaps less frequently affirmed in constitutional and related provisions.2
Both notions, frequently to the fore in judicial and various other statements of and about the law, are so familiar
that we tend not to regard them as separate, running both together because – another common assumption this –
they are surely simply part of, or reducible to, or derivable from, the rule of law ideal. If the rule of law ideal is
not in part about equality under and before the law, then what could it be about?