The War Against the Rule of Law (LAW289H1S)

The rule of law is in peril everywhere. In the UK and the USA, it is being contested from within by influential scholars at leading law schools, notably Oxford and Harvard. This contestation often happens in the name of the ‘common good’, where the content of the common good seems to be determined by a very conservative understanding of the Catholic natural law tradition, adopted by some Canadian lawyers and judges, and which is deeply opposed to the liberal idea of autonomy--that individuals should decide for themselves about how best to live. At the same time, these scholars argue for a definition of the rule of law that excludes human rights and respect for international law. We will focus in this course on a set of debates in the UK prompted by the Rwanda Act, enacted in 2024, which required that individuals who sought asylum in the UK be rendered to Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed and where they would remain even if their claims were denied.  As we will see, this concrete focus provides a terrain on which the more theoretical debates about the rule of law can be adjudicated as well as the more political debates about the common good. While the main evaluation of the course will be done by a sit-down, open book final examination, I will provide students in advance with a clear sense of the questions they will be required to answer.