The Salzburg Statement on the Rule of Law

The erosion of the rule of law is not an abstract crisis; it has immediate and tangible consequences. It harms communities subjected to unequal policing, voters who lose faith that peaceful change is possible, businesses that can no longer rely on contracts, and societies that depend on trust to function. Nor are rule-of-law failures confined within national borders. International rules shape air travel, trade, supply chains, financial markets, product safety, human rights, war, and migration. These rules may feel distant until their failure reaches home.

The rule of law rarely disappears in one moment. It erodes through small exceptions: a bribe paid, a court ruling ignored, a lie excused, a remedy denied, a minority excluded, or a shortcut accepted. As exceptions multiply, institutions become less fair and less predictable. As institutions weaken, it becomes easier for those with power to avoid accountability. The result is not only a legal crisis but a crisis of public confidence: a growing belief that rules are optional for the powerful and uncertain for everyone else.

The deeper danger is that this erosion often feels ordinary while it is happening. Daily life carries on: people go to work, receive packages, pay bills, vote, and sign contracts. Beneath that veneer of normalcy, however, legal safeguards weaken. Regulators become unreliable, trade rules turn unpredictable, anti-corruption commitments are enforced unevenly, and states distance themselves from international accountability systems. Each step may seem technical, remote, or like someone else's problem.

Yet institutional drift reaches ordinary households. Teachers, nurses, factory workers, civil servants, and firefighters may never think of themselves as market participants, but their pensions and retirement savings depend on predictable legal frameworks - ones in which companies cannot mislead investors with impunity, insiders cannot loot without consequence, fiduciary duties are enforced, regulators police fraud, and courts provide remedies. When those assumptions erode, the harm reaches everyone.

The central questions remain simple: Do people have a say? Are their rights protected? Can they obtain a remedy when power is abused? If the answer is no, the rule of law is not merely weakened in theory; it is failing in people's lives.

The pressures on the rule of law are visible in domestic legal systems, international institutions, markets, media, and public life. Around the world, people are losing confidence that laws are applied fairly, institutions act independently, and power is constrained by rules.

In some countries, governments weaponize law to silence dissent, discriminate against particular groups, detain people without due process, or punish individuals, organizations, and businesses without transparent rules and procedures. Courts and judges face overt political pressure, targeted attacks for independent decisions, or efforts to reshape their benches to serve partisan interests. When legal institutions become instruments of political control, outcomes are reshaped to serve the interests of those in power.

These pressures reinforce one another. In many societies, legitimate grievances about corruption, inequality, exclusion, lack of opportunity, and democratic fatigue have weakened trust in public institutions. Bad-faith political actors then exploit those grievances. They promise simple solutions, national restoration, or protection from imagined enemies while using the language of law to concentrate power, target opponents, and undermine independent institutions.

The fracture extends into the international order. We are witnessing a shift away from compliance with shared rules toward selective, transactional, or unilateral uses of legal power. States weaken the international rule of law when they demand compliance from others while treating their own obligations as optional, or invoke shared rules selectively against adversaries but not themselves or their partners. International institutions also face intense strain. They are frequently criticized - and sometimes rightly - for failing to apply law consistently or to listen adequately to the experiences, voices, and legal traditions of historically marginalized actors. These perceptions, and sometimes realities, weaken confidence in the international rule of law at the very moment when global cooperation is most needed.

New technologies, media ecosystems, and powerful non-state actors have also intensified these pressures. When properly governed, artificial intelligence, social media, and other technologies can be significant forces for good. Where legal safeguards are weak, however, they can be harnessed to spread misinformation, attack courts and lawyers, distort public debate, and undermine trust in institutions that protect justice and fairness. At the same time, private actors increasingly wield influence once associated mainly with governments, often without comparable structures of accountability.

These pressures are distinct, but they point in the same direction: a weakening of the institutions, habits, and expectations that make law a genuine restraint on power.

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