Читать книгу A Citizen’s Guide to the Rule of Law - Kalypso Nicolaidis - Страница 4

The rule of law really matters. But like oxygen, we only know it when it is missing. In fact, we hope to convince our readers in these pages that it is the most precious human invention of all time, pervading our daily lives. When we buy something in the shop, when we pay our rent, when we meet each other for a chat in a pub, or when we march in protest, we trust in the rule of law to protect us from governmental overreach, mafia godfathers, or the will of the majority in our society. As we take the rule of law for granted, we fail to see when it’s under attack. And under attack it is around the world.

Indeed, the rule of law may be blatantly mocked and trampled in places far from Europe, from Hong Kong to Venezuela, or in its neighbourhood, from Ankara to Algiers. But, rule-of-lawlessness has also become a European disease.

This book is written in Europe, by two Europeans, with a focus on what is going on in Europe, both in the European Union and in countries aspiring to become members. But we hope that the book is relevant beyond Europe and beyond the challenges of EU enlargement. We will discuss developments in some specific countries in this book, but neither in detail not in the necessary depth these cases would deserve. Our goal is to explore the rule of law and its contemporary challenges, not to discuss the intricacies of any particular circumstances of its breach.

Why is this ‘a citizen’s guide’? Because we explore this state of affairs from the point of view of citizens; citizens who want to understand what it is, why it is under attack, why this matters to them and what they can do about it.

If you care about freedom in our age but do not care for abstract jargon, this book is for you. While taking the issues seriously, we try to treat them with some levity so as to make concepts accessible and practicable. Throughout the book, we have added explanations of some important concepts in side boxes, which are meant as much to amuse as to explain.

We speak to rule of law newcomers as well professionals, bureaucrats, and NGO activists and NGO activists, who are already engaged in this field and have done so much to defend the rule of law. Above all, we offer this book to any citizen curious about the meaning of this seemingly technical term and perhaps, hopefully, wishing to spread the word.

The book draws in part on a 2012 publication prepared for the EU at the behest of the OECD and we are grateful to its co-author, Rachel Kleinfeld, for her contribution at the time.1 Here, we have both substantially updated and broadened the initial perspective by exploring the current context which has heightened its demise, namely the rise of illiberalism and the decline of democracy in the Western Balkans and beyond. The book also assesses some positive steps taken by the EU in recent years, offers further recommendations and in doing so, hopes to empower citizens who seek to resist regression and entrench progress.

We wish to thank all our friends and colleagues with whom we have discussed these ideas in the past few years. In particular, we thank Dorian Singh for her assistance in finalising the manuscript. Adis Merdzanovic wishes to thank the Swiss National Science Foundation for supporting this research. And we wish to wholeheartedly thank the team at ibidem, in particular Valerie Lange, for their patience with us, their commitment to the subject, and their support throughout the publication process.

This book is dedicated to all the fighters for the rule of law, wherever they may be.

The authors

Oxford and Zurich

January 2021

1 Foreword

Kalypso Nicolaidis and Rachel Kleinfeld, “Rethinking Europe’s “rule of law” and Enlargement Agenda: The Fundamental Dilemma”, published as part of the SIGMA Papers, No. 49, OECD Publishing, 2012, republished as Jean Monnet Working Paper 12/12. NYU School of Law.

Chapter 2