Rule of Law Teleology: Against the Misuse and Abuse of Rule of Law Rhetoric

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The ‘rule of law’ is one of the most important ideas in contemporary constitutional and political discourse. Yet it can be understood in more or less ‘anatomical’ versus ‘teleological’ ways. Martin Krygier has helped us better understand this distinction, and showed how a teleological approach can help guard against the misuse of the rule of law as an ideal. In this short essay, I further show how the kind of teleological approach developed by Krygier can help guard against a related, but distinct danger—i.e. the danger of ‘abusive constitutionalism’, or the abusive application of rule of law ideas.