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Cracks in the Foundations: Understanding the Great Rule of Law Debate in the EU

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Cracks in the Foundations: Understanding the Great Rule of Law Debate in the EU JCMS 2016 pp. 1–12 DOI: 10.1111/jcms.12400 Cracks in the Foundations: Understanding the Great Rule of Law Debate in the EU AMICHAI MAGEN Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy, and Strategy, IDC Herzliya Abstract The article offers a succinct conceptual and analytical framework for approaching the ‘great rule of law debate’ currently unfolding in the EU (European Union) and the contending positions of the various EU institutions embroiled in it. It addresses the challenge of conceptualization imbued in the notion of the rule of law, and critically examines the definition of the concept provided by the EC (European Commission). It then demonstrates that over the course of modern European integration, the rule of law emerged as a central dimension in four distinct core areas of EC/EU identity and activity. Should the contemporary crisis of foundational values persist or deepen, each of the four is expected to be adversely affected. Finally, the article explores the emerging ‘rule of law turn’ in the EU. Keywords: rule of law; European Union; conceptualization; liberal democracy Introduction This opening article of the symposium offers a succinct conceptual and analytical frame- work within which observers of the EU (European Union) may wish to approach the ‘great rule of law debate’ currently unfolding in the Union, and the contending positions of the various EU institutions embroiled in it. Section I addresses the challenge of conceptualization imbued in the idea and ideal of the rule of law, and critically examines the definition of the concept provided by the EC’s (European Commission) new Framework – the first, and so far only, comprehensive con- ceptualization of the rule of law ever to be articulated by an EU institution. Section II proceeds to demonstrate that, over the course of European integration, the rule of law emerged as a central dimension in four distinct core areas of EC/EU identity and activity: (1) as a value upon which the Union itself is founded and which is the as- sumed shared patrimony of all Member States, (2) as a prerequisite of the trust necessary for the operation of the Internal Market and Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ), (3) as an eligibility criterion for EU membership and (4) as a central element in the Union’s external relations and self-understanding as a global actor committed to the deepening of a liberal international order. Should the contemporary crisis of founda- tional values persist or deepen, it argues, each of the four is expected to be adversely affected. Lastly, section III asks why the Commission has opted to frame the current crisis ex- clusively in terms of the rule of law, rather than the other foundational values listed in Ar- ticle 2 TEU (Treaty on European Union), and why have the remaining institutions tacitly followed? The nature of the illiberal policies pursued by the Member States which insti- gated the crisis, particularly Hungary and Poland, provides only partial justification for © 2016 University Association for Contemporary European Studies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd 2 Amichai Magen this choice. Framing the debate in terms of the rule of law, it suggests, is explicable with reference to four additional factors, and marks a distinct ‘rule of law turn’ in the thinking of EU policy-elites, a turn that is also identifiable in like-minded international organizations. I. The Rule of Law: Definition at Last! Alongside the principles of human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality and human rights, the rule of law is defined, by Article 2 TEU, as a value upon which the Union itself is founded and which is ‘common to the Member States’. Yet no provision of the treaties or EU legislation ever defined what is actually meant by the ‘rule of law’ or how the term relates to the other foundational values listed in Article 2. Similarly, the rule of law is mentioned in the preambles, but never defined, in the statute of the CoE (Council of Eu- rope), the ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights) and the UN (United Nations) Universal Declaration of Human Rights. If for no other reason, therefore, the Commis- sion’s Framework (Commission of the European Communities, 2014a) is of substantial constitutional significance to the Union, since it provides for the very first time, a public, comprehensive conceptualization of the concept by an EU institution. The importance of this conceptualization stems from the fact that the Commission’s formulation not only posits a pan-European definition of an idea and ideal with ancient roots, and varying interpretations, in the legal traditions of the Member States (Gosalbo-Bono, 2010, pp. 240–59), but also because the rule of law is today a polysemic, hotly contested term – at once a powerful ‘social imaginary’ (May, 2014, pp. 1–16), uni- versally lauded moral good (United Nations, 2012) and a concept distinctly prone to def- initional abuse (Magen, 2009, p. 55). This dual nature of the rule of law – its legal-normative weight and susceptibility to conceptual stretching – is worth untangling, since it underlies the current controversy and the role that the various EU institutions should, and should not, play in it. Traditionally the purview of constitutional lawyers and political philosophers, the rule of law has, particularly over the last decade, been heralded as a panacea for a host of hu- man ills – poverty, democratic dysfunction, conflict – and become the darling of policy- makers and scholars in a plethora of disciplines: from comparative democratization (Magen and Morlino, 2008; Fukuyama, 2015) and development economics (Dam, 2006; Haggard and Tiede, 2011), to security and conflict-resolution studies (USAID, 2005; Grenfell, 2013; Haggard and Tiede, 2014). Amidst a host of deep cleavages, be- tween east and west, north and south, as Tamanaha (2004) observes: ‘there appears to be widespread agreement, traversing all fault lines, on one point, and one point alone: that the “rule of law” is good for everyone’ (p. 1). As such, whoever defines and speaks for the rule of law commands potent moral as well as legal authority. As its popularity soared, however, the rule of law became uniquely vulnerable to conceptual over-stretching. The term is commonly brandished by politicians, diplomats, jurists, economists, soldiers, journalists, bureaucrats and academics to imply at least six meanings that are distinct, but seldom differentiated by those who invoke the term: (1) state authority bound by law, (2) equality before the law, (3) law, order and human se- curity, (4) respect for property rights, (5) predictable, accessible and efficient justice, and (6) public power respectful of fundamental rights. In addition, international lawyers © 2016 University Association for Contemporary European Studies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd Cracks in the foundations 3 and organizations increasingly call for the building of an ‘international rule of law’, meaning a world governed by rules not force (Chesterman, 2008; United Nations, 2012). The conceptualization challenge is exacerbated by the highly memetic nature of the term; its propensity for seeping and adapting over time to particular legal, political, and economic contexts and agendas. Hence, for Dicey the concept represented one of the two legs upon which the constitutional order of England has rested since the Norman Conquest of 1066 (Ardnt, 1957). For Neumann (1986), a Weimar Republic jurist and member of the Frankfurt School writing in the 1920s, it stood for one of the two defining characteristics of the modern nation-state; the rule of law (or Rechtsstaat) being in perpet- ual, irreconcilable struggle with the sovereignty. Whereas in the 1940s Hayek (1944) per- ceived the rule of law as the bulwark against the totalitarian tendencies of state-socialism, by the late 1980s Hayek’s disciples invoked it in their assault on Keynesian economics and advocacy for neo-liberal reform. For the World Bank, the notion that the rule of law is essential for healthy economic development became a core axiom since the mid- 1990s (Haggard and Tiede, 2011). For the soldier fighting an insurgency and the diplomat engaged in state-building, the rule of law is a central pillar of counter-insurgency doctrine and post-conflict reconstruction (Grenfell, 2013). And for the UN today the rule of law has arguably become the predominant organizing principle for a fair international order (United Nations, 2012). Does this plurality of understandings render the concept meaningless due to ‘abuse and general over-use’ (Shklar, 1987, p. 1)? I would argue that it does not, but that Member States and Council anxiety about the Commission’s new Framework is at the very least understandable given, inter alia, the multi-faceted nature of the term and its malleability in the face of shifting political agendas. Still, it is submitted, ‘the rule of law’ is capable of meaningful definition, the Commis- sion’s new Framework contains a tangible conceptualization of the term and that concep- tualization is composed quite precisely of several constitutive principles. At the heart of the struggle for conceptualization of the rule of law lies a fundamental choice between what has been variably called ‘formal’ and ‘substantive’ (Craig, 1997), ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ (Selznick, 1999) or ‘rule-book’ as opposed to ‘rights’-based (Dworkin, 1985) understandings. Formal, or thin, conceptions focus on the conditions necessary for law to restrict sheer arbitrariness in the use of public power. Accordingly, for Dicey (1908): ‘the rule-of-law is contrasted with every system of government based on the exercise by persons in authority of wide, arbitrary, or discretion- ary powers of constraint’, so that no individual could be lawfully punished ‘except for a distinct breach of law established in the ordinary legal manner before the ordinary courts of the land’ (p. 188). Restraining discretionary use of power is similarly at the heart of Hayek’s (1944) definition: ‘Stripped of all technicalities … government in all its actions is bound by rules fixed and announced beforehand …’ (p.
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