Brief Preliminary Remarks

No satisfactory account of the relationships between objectivity and the rule of law can begin with the assumption that the nature of objectivity and the nature of the rule of law are transparent and that the only things to be clarified are the relationships between them. What will become apparent in my opening two chapters is that both objectivity and the rule of law are complicatedly multifaceted. To ponder rewardingly how each of them bears on the other, we need to explore the distinct varieties of each of them.

This first chapter will disentangle multiple aspects or dimensions of objectivity, and the next chapter will then differentiate between the rule of law as a morally neutral mode of governance and the Rule of Law as a moral ideal. The final chapter will mull over some of the relationships between the sundry aspects of objectivity and the moral authority of law. (All three chapters will broach numerous relationships between objectivity and the rule of law or the Rule of Law.) My discussions will aim to provide a general overview, rather than an exhaustive account, of some major issues that have preoccupied legal and moral and political philosophers. Though such an overview will inevitably prescind from countless complexities that would receive attention in any comprehensive treatment of the topic, it should suffice to highlight the most important distinctions by reference to which those complexities are to be fathomed.