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The Rule of Law Without Separation of Powers: Legality in the Classical Tradition

Vermeule, Adrian, The Rule of Law Without Separation of Powers: Legality in the Classical Tradition (September 28, 2023). Harvard Public Law Working Paper No. 23-29, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4587125 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4587125  – “Among theorists of legal liberalism, a common assumption is that the rule of law, rightly understood, entails some version of the separation of powers — especially the separation of adjudication from the making or enforcement of law. Classical legal theory, by contrast, remains generally agnostic about the separation of powers, but holds that a combination of powers is entirely consistent in principle with a profound commitment to the rule of law and legal justice. On the classical view, no particular institutional technology, including the separation of powers, is defined into the rule of law, so long as the constitutional order as a whole is rationally and adequately ordered to the proper end of law, the general welfare or common good.”

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