On the Rule of Law: History, Politics, Theory. By Brian Z. Tamanaha. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 188p. $75.00 cloth, $29.99 paper.

Brian Z. Tamanaha reminds us that the rule of law is a near-universal yet little-understood ideal. His book presents a brief and clear introductory history and analysis that defends the coherence and value of the rule of law and that gives a sense of its global reach, limitations, and prospects. Tamanaha wisely argues that what is called the rule of law is actually a family of doctrines. Crucial to it, on his view, are three “themes” (p. 114): government limited by law, formal legality (which “entails public, prospective rules with the qualities of generality, equality of application, and certainty” [p. 119]), and a distinction between the rule of law and the “rule of man” (p. 122). The theoretical core of the book deftly explicates Friedrich Hayek's defenses and Roberto Unger's criticisms of legal liberalism as a prelude to discussing the challenges of indeterminacy and surveying a range of thinner to thicker formal and substantive conceptions of the rule of law. Tamanaha analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of each of these conceptions. These analyses are intelligent and fair-minded; his own position is veiled, but suggests support for a relatively thin substantive and relatively thick formal conception (involving basic individual rights within a formally democratic legal order), friendly to Hayek and not too bothered by the acknowledged indeterminacy of legal rules.