Why I usually use scare quotes around "the rule of law"

People like this may never get it, but the reason why I use scare quotes around "the rule of law" most of the time is that American law changes at least every election cycle. It's one thing for things like economic regulations on business to change, but legislators are free to revise the entire criminal statute every year if they want to. That badly undermines the rule of law, and it doesn't help that the courts and law enforcement often make things up as they go along or get away with ignoring whatever laws they find inconvenient. The public has no recourse against such people other than to hope against all hope that the next time around they'll elect someone who will hold them accountable.

Unfortunately, we have to obey the laws even if the system does not obey them. However, I find the Mosaic Law to be superior in practical terms, if not moral in many cases (such as its treatment of the accused, which is far more protective than American law), in that it is unchanging. It is basically quivalent to having the state's entire criminal code codified into the state constitution, and requiring a constitutional amendment to change anything in the body of laws that has a real possibility of denying life, liberty or property. As such, it's unchanging, or in our case it would be monumentally difficult to change it, and thus the rule of law would go from being more of a nice philosophical concept to a more observable phenomenon.

In regard to that commenter's attack on me using the Old Testament Law as a source of moral authority, I will say that I believe that the Torah is the only morally sound legal code for Christians to use as a guide in dealing with the world. It has no authority in the United States, and we shouldn't attempt to make it the law of the land, but it informs us of what is good and just in a legal system. It also informs our own behavior as Christians as readily as does the Gospel since the Torah and Gospel truly interlinked.

Part of the value that the Torah gives us is that the Mosaic Law shows us what God says is a truly legitimate legal code. When a legal code runs absolutely contrary to those principles, it should give us pause with regard to the legitimacy of that law and the wisdom of obeying it. I certainly don't think we are close to any point where American law is fundamentally opposed to those principles, but part of the beauty of the Torah and its law is that informs of what a moral and lawful authority would look like.