 One of the key determinants of the legitimacy of a legal order is the extent of its compliance with the widely acclaimed, but deeply contested, value commonly designated as “the rule of law”. An initial problem is that the phrase “the rule of law” is used to mean many different things. It is important to avoid confusing the rule of law with the idea of rule by law. The latter refers to the idea of governance through the means, and under the constraint of, positive law. But the fact that a mode of governance assumes a recognizably legal form does not necessarily reveal anything about its value. When the expression “rule of law” is used to mean rule by law, there is no meaningful difference between, for example, a call to respect the rule of law in international relations and a simple call to respect international law.