Law and the Common Good

In this piece, Ofer Raban takes issue with the claim advanced in a recent book by Brian Tamanaha that the Rule of Law requires that all our laws advance the common good (rather than the interests of any narrow faction).That claim, says Raban, is out of date with modern pluralistic sensibilities, and with our modern understanding of law and the legislative process. But the fact that the law need not always advance the interests of society as a whole, and may therefore be used as a tool for the advancement of some at the expense of others, does not mean that the law itself is not always a common good- for the Rule of Law means, first and foremost, the rule of reason and rationality; and passing our social regulations through the prism of reason and rationality is an indisputable common good.