The expression ‘rule of law’ alone only refers to the attitude of citizens towards law. It is a neutral term, and in order to be filled with meaning, it needs further clarification.

Laws, the legal system, rules, can differ greatly and even contradict each other depending on the historical period and the countries in which they are in force.

Not long ago (in 1938), Italy passed a series of laws, called ‘racial’ because they differentiated citizens according to their ethnic group, and introducing heavy discrimination against Jews and, in significantly less restrictive terms, against other groups. Among other things, the laws forbade people of Jewish origin to be employed in the public sector, in particular as school teachers, and also forbade children and young people of Jewish origin from attending school. When the Fascist regime fell, those laws were repealed. The Italian system was equally legal before and after the passing and the repeal of the racial laws, but the difference is evident.

Less than a century earlier (in 1865) a thirteenth amendment to the United States Constitution (which had come into force in 1787) became necessary to mark the end of slavery in that country. Until then, in the United States of America it was legal for a person to be the property of another person. Afterwards, the converse became legal. Legality existed before the Constitution was modified, and after the amendment.

Similarly, today a system in which capital punishment is applied because there are laws that provide for it, is as legal as a system where it is not because that penalty was abolished.

The fact that such different – and even contradictory – varieties of ‘legality’ can exist, shows that an unconditional appreciation of law-abiding behaviour can be the result of a misunderstanding or of an unstated implication.

How is it possible that the way we organise our living together is irrelevant, that the content of the rules that govern it is indifferent, that measures providing for the death penalty or forbidding it, that forbidding some people what others are allowed to do, or banning discrimination, are equivalent and have the same dignity, because they organise our living together, thus making it possible?