ABSTRACT
While many countries around the world are fervently trying to institute or restore the rule of law and are looking to Western nations as models, legal scholars, especially in the United States, have launched severe attacks on the notion. Legal limitation on government is a highly important element of the rule of law, but it is potentially misleading insofar as it intimates an identity between the rule of law and the rule of laws. The chapter gives a few examples that illustrate a complexity that often arises in connection with the restoration of the rule of law in times of trouble, the issue facing successor regimes. The quality of the citizen's obligation to obey the law is much affected by whether officials have adhered to the inner morality of law. Some of the most difficult problems in implementing the canons of legal morality arise in connection with the requirement that laws should typically be prospective and not retroactive.
