Commitment to the Rule of Law: From a Political to an Organizational Ideal

International organizations such as the United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU) present themselves as champions for the rule of law. In recent years, EU member states such as Hungary and Poland have taken questionable measures, replacing the top of the judicial branch, bringing media under political control, changing the electoral system. The European Union has responded by employing the EU Treaty instruments for rule of law oversight. The United Nations are less directly engaged in supervising the rule of law, but there are many documents and policies that confirm the UN concern for the rule of law in states. What is much less obvious is how the UN and the EU think about the rule of law as a governing idea for themselves. The EU Treaty presents the rule of law as something to which it is committed in general. The UN discussions of the rule of law include reference to the rule of law as an international value, and include UN bodies as actors that need to commit to governance of international law. In both cases, however, the rule of law is primarily described as something that states need to uphold.