The status of the liberal tradition has occasioned much heated controversy of late, including the accusation that it has failed—that its very success is its nemesis. But the liberal tradition, like any living tradition, comprises a wide range of elements, and attempts to define it in the service of an argument—in support or in opposition—risk oversimplification. Nadia E. Nedzel (Southern University Law Center) and Nicholas Capaldi (College of Business, Loyola University New Orleans) avoid such abstract definitions. They focus specifically on the “rule of law” as a cultural practice in the Anglo-American tradition, and as a great achievement in modern politics.

Any comprehensive treatment of the liberal tradition must include certain features, such as individual liberty, limited government, the rule of law, and the historic transformation in the Western world from political orders based on command and obedience to those based on authority and acknowledgment, which is to say, government based on consent. This book offers a detailed exposition of the idea of the rule of law as it emerges in Anglo-American history, and as it appears in the living practice of the English-speaking world. The role of law, they say, “is to define the rules that enable individuals, who have their own ends and commitments, to live in peace and voluntary cooperation with their fellows.” They elaborate on this basic idea to illustrate what the rule of law can mean in observable, concrete circumstances.

Nedzel and Capaldi argue that the idea of the rule of law