The U.S. Flounders On The World Rule Of Law Index

We're 26th out of 142 countries, reflecting a 44% drop since 1916.

If the U.S. was an elementary school student, s/he would be afraid to bring home a report card like this.

The United States is languishing one step ahead of a former communist country and satellite of the Soviet Union (Slovakia) on the World Justice Project’s (WJP) Rule of Law index, which measures criteria that form the bedrock of a democratic society.

The WJP is not like a United Nation’s committee with an ax to grind. The WJP maps a country’s place on the rule of law by collecting data through questionnaires administered to a representatives sample of the general public and legal experts who interact with national and state institutions. It has a modium of credibility.

Yet, there seems to be little acknowledgment of U.S. drop in world standing. How did it happen? Why aren’t we fixing it? Don’t Americans deserve a legal system that delivers A+ results?

One factor may be that the U.S. is a more diverse country than the leading countries on the WRL index.

Challenge of a Diverse Society?

It seem obvious that the U.S. faces unique challenges.

Data from widely-used Historical Index of Ethnic Fractionalization (HIEF) shows the U.S. ranks 68th in the world for racial diversity with a racial diversity score of 52.7%. The HIEF data set covers 162 countries from 1945-2013 and is outdated given immigration trends in recent years. If anything, the U.S. has become much more diverse.

By contrast, Sweden, which is ranked number one in the WRL Rule of Law index is 120th under HIEF’s racial diversity ranking, with a 21.9% racial diversity score.

It is more challenging to implement a rule of law that satisfies people with different backgrounds, languages, and customs.

However, the U.S. is one of the richest countries in the world and has resources to tackle any challenge, provided these resources were directed toward the problems.

Here’s the U.S.’s overall ranking in recent years by WJP across 142 countries:

• 2023: Rank, 26; Score, 0.72

• 2022: Rank, 26; Score, 0.72

• 2021: Rank, 27; Score, 0.69

• 2020: Rank, 21; Score, 0.72

• 2019: Rank, 20; Score, 0.72

• 2018: Rank, 19; Score, 0.73

• 2017: Rank,19 ; Score, 0.73

• 2016: Rank, 18 ; Score, 0.74

• 2015: Rank, 19; Score, 0.73

The U.S. lags behind (in this order) Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Estonia, Ireland, Austria, Canada, Australia, Japan, United Kingdom, Belgium, Singapore, Lithuania, South Korea, Czechia, France, Latvia, Hong Kong, Spain, and Uruguay.

Our nearest neighbor on the down side of the scale are Slovakia, Greece, Singapore, Cyprus and Namibia. Slovakia, otherwise known as the ‘Land of the Slavs,’ is a formerly Communist country that became an independent state in 1993 when Czechoslovakia was disbanded.

The two major areas where the United States has dropped in the rankings since 2015 on the world scale are: