![\"\"](\"https:\/\/world.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Yale25.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
In the most non-controversial and basic sense, the rule of law means formal legality. The law binds citizens and governments. When it comes to nation states, law is enacted by democratically elected legislatures; legal statutes are openly available and sufficiently clear to follow. State actions can be judicially reviewed for compliance\u00a0with a constitution<\/a>.<\/p>\n In its more ambitious conceptualization, the rule of law can also be understood to include substantive human rights\u00a0and equity<\/a>. In Canada, The Constitution Act of 1982\u00a0references the rule of law in its preamble<\/a>.<\/p>\n The modern Canadian iteration of the rule of law \u2014 which includes substantive ideas about\u00a0human rights<\/a>\u00a0as well as Indigenous\u00a0treaty rights<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 is based on liberal ideas shared by many countries, including, historically, the United States. What distinguishes a rule-of-law state from an authoritarian one to a large extent is whether state actions can be judicially reviewed for compliance\u00a0with a constitution<\/a>.<\/p>\n Although rule of law scholars debate the parameters of the concept of the rule of law, few would debate that what is happening during U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s second term presents anything other than a wholesale attack on the rule of law both domestically in the\u00a0U.S<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0internationally<\/a>.<\/p>\n I am a rule of law researcher, educator and lawyer. Since Trump was elected to his first term in 2016, I\u2019ve relied on American scholars, from a variety of disciplines, to understand what is happening.<\/p>\n These include two prominent Yale professors, philosopher Jason Stanley and historian Timothy Snynder,\u00a0both of whom have recently announced they\u2019re moving to the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto<\/a>.<\/p>\n In their scholarship, Stanley and Snyder have sought to\u00a0explain the authoritarian impulses of<\/a>\u00a0the first Trump administration and how to resist it<\/a>.<\/p>\n Stanley\u2019s father,\u00a0a German Jew who fled Germany for America in 1939, carries the remembrance of fascism<\/a>.<\/p>\n Both Stanley and<\/a>\u00a0Snyder explore the similarities between what is occurring in Trump\u2019s America, Viktor Orban\u2019s Hungary, Vladimir Putin\u2019s Russia, Xi Jinping\u2019s China and, equally chillingly, between\u00a0Trump\u2019s America and Adolf Hitler\u2019s Germany<\/a>. Even prior to the first Trump presidency, Stanley already asked in his 2015 book,\u00a0How Propoganda Works<\/a><\/em>, whether the U.S., \u201cthe world\u2019s oldest liberal democracy,\u201d might already have become a liberal democracy \u201cin name only?\u201d<\/p>\n In his 2018 book,\u00a0The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America<\/a><\/em>, Snyder described Trump as a \u201csado-populist, whose policies were designed to hurt the most vulnerable people of his own electorate.\u201d<\/p>\n Stanley\u2019s focus on propaganda and rhetoric\u00a0were especially useful for framing the politics of Trump<\/a>.<\/p>\n Similarly, Snyder\u2019s focus on the similarities between Trump and other authoritarian leaders, through their attachment to extreme illiberal ideologies,\u00a0helped frame public discourse in the U.S. during the first Trump presidency<\/a>. \u201cIlliberal\u201d does not imply conservative in opposition to \u201cbeing liberal\u201d (with the resonance of \u201cleftist\u201d); rather, it denotes a\u00a0repudiation of liberal democracy<\/a>, in the words of political scientist Thomas J. Main.<\/p>\n Both Stanley and Snyder are on the public record explaining\u00a0their decision to immigrate to Canada, on the basis that they can no longer continue their scholarly activities in an American university, even a premier one like Yale<\/a>.<\/p>\nExamination of propaganda, rhetoric<\/strong><\/h4>\n