The Rule of Law: Fifteen Years of Lessons
Despite our Army's doctrinal shift to decisive action against near-peer adversaries, we remain heavily engaged in Rule of Law (RoL). There is little to suggest this will change as RoL remains an important component of phase IV operations, even in a decisive action contingency. The first edition of the Rule of Law Handbook: A Practitioner's Guide for Judge Advocates, published in 2007, defined a "rule of law operation" as "the legal aspect of stability operations."' By 2015, the Handbook had not become any more specific, instead relying on the definition provided by the Army's stability operations doctrine: "[B]road categories of actions designed to support host-nation institutional capacity, functional effectiveness and popular acceptance of a legal system and related government areas."