The UN Declaration of 24 September 2012 reaffirming the commitment of Heads of State and Government to the Rule of Law reflects the current uneasiness accompanying the application of just the concept. This short paper argues that it is due to discrepancies in its worldwide understanding and to...

Over 10 years ago, Feld and Voigt (2003) introduced the first indicator for objectively meas-uring the actual independence of the judiciary and demonstrated its utility in a large cross-section of countries. The indicator has been widely used, but also criticized. This paper pre-sents more...