Publication
Changing meaning of the rule of law
In this article, Jaroslaw Kantorowicz and Bastián González-Bustamante employ advanced text-as-data methods to explore how the meaning of the rule of law has evolved over the past century in UK and US parliamentary speeches, focusing on procedural (thin) and substantive (thick) conceptualisations.
- Author
- Jaroslaw Kantorowicz & Bastián González-Bustamante
- Date
- 19 June 2025
- Links
- Read the full article here
The study utilises diachronic word embeddings to analyse over 100 years of parliamentary debates. It reveals that procedural aspects, such as stable rules and judicial independence, have maintained a strong and stable association with the rule of law. In contrast, substantive elements, including human rights and democratic principles, have become relatively less connected to the rule of law over time. Despite this decline, the rights dimension remains critically important, roughly equal in significance to procedural components.
The research highlights the rule of law as an 'essentially contested' concept, lacking a single, fixed definition, with diverse interpretations shaped by political and historical contexts. By applying computational social science methods, the article offers an objective, replicable way to trace conceptual shifts, while acknowledging limitations related to algorithmic bias and corpus selection.