The Rule of Law at Home and Abroad

The article addresses the meaning of the Rule of Law and its import between domestic and supra-State legalities, starting from problems raised by real cases, and the insufficiency of some received ideas or more common notions- from those requisites-based to formal, material, or procedural ones- to cope with them. Accordingly it focuses upon a “dual” structure of legality as an institutional condition for the Rule of Law to pursue its normative ideal. The “duality condition” for the Rule of law is historically and theoretically reconstructed in its origin and development, and the notion is carefully distinguished from rule compliance, procedural fairness, substantive justice, the principle of legality, and other different achievements of the present legal civilization. Its essential content shapes a separate, distinct identity vis à vis democracy and human rights, while it appears conducive to the appraisal of several problems related to the Rule of law oversight in diverse current circumstances.