ABSTRACT
While creating a divided colonial society, Britain also gave to the United States the “rule of law,” a major source of strength as the United States has sought to overcome the legacy of that divided society. The rule of law, despite its apparently simple meaning, involves complexities and sometimes contradictory meanings. This book adopts a specific concept of the rule of law, based on a government that has limited its own authority to engage in arbitrary actions, and governed by a legal system that those subject to the law have a hand in shaping. People tend to obey laws under the rule of law because they believe that the legal system is legitimate, rather than only because they fear adverse consequences if they disobey. Wrongs committed under slavery do not negate that the Anglo-American rule of law has meaning and importance. It was the rule of law that allowed the United States to move beyond the injustices of the plural society and slavery in ways that other colonies and former colonies without an effective rule of law, for instance in Latin America, could not achieve.
