Special Workshop on Martin Krygier’s Tempering Power: Beyond the Rule of Law

SW 43–Special Workshop on Martin Krygier’s Tempering Power: Beyond the Rule of Law

Convenor: Xiaobo Zhai

Contact: xbzhai@um.edu.mo

In the INTRUDOCTION of his forthcoming book TEMPERING POWER: BEYOND THE RULE OF LAW (Cambridge University Press, 2026), Krygier writes,

 I have …  been writing about the rule of law for a very long time. So much so, that in some circles it is taken as what we these days might call my ‘brand.’ … I am a ‘rule of law guy’, with a ‘passion for the rule of law’. 

For a long time that’s what I thought too. … But I have now decided to come out. After decades of writing about and in praise of the rule of law, I have discovered that my true passion lies elsewhere. I’m still a kind of rule of law guy, but after years of dogged and flaunted devotion, I have discovered that my real love is for something different: tempered power. The two are related, and indeed passion for the latter explains why we should be interested in the former, but that interest is derivative rather than intrinsic.

This autobiographical ‘confession’ best conveys the central ideas of the book. This special workshop consists twelve papers that engage in critical dialogue with Martin Krygier’s major arguments in the book. The topics that are addressed includes:

1. The rule of law and tempering arbitrary power
2. The rule of law and human rationality conditions, especially the normative attitudes towards legal practice
3. The rule of law and moral values, including equality and dignity.
4. The rule of law and private power, or the horizontal dimension of the rule of law
5. The social causality involved by the rule of law
6. The rule of law, political culture, and political association
7. The rule law and algorithmic governance
8. Krygier’s reading of Fuller

THE CONTRIBUTORS AND THE TITLES OF THE PRESENTATIONS

1. Bustamante, Thomas, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil: The Rule of Law as a Structure of Recognition: An Inferentialist Expansion of Krygier’s Account of the Rule of Law as Tempered Power
2. Chen, Hung-Ju, Academia Sinica, Taiwan: From Tempering Power to Militant Rule of Law: Reclaiming Fuller’s Spirit in the Face of Autocratic Legalism
3. Hsu, Chia-Shin, Academia Sinica, Taiwan: The crisis of liberal modernity, the art of political association, and the rule of law
4. Kaino, Michihiro, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan: The Restrained Role of the Rule of Law in Prof. Krygier’s Project of Tempering Power
   Lin, Jyr-Jong, Soochow University, Taiwan: Private Legal Power and the Rule of Law
5. Lin, Wang, University of Edinburgh, the UK: From Solution to Justification: Rethinking Conceptual Analysis of the Rule of Law
6. Luo, Yizhong, Shanghai Normal University, China: Functional or Constitutive? A Review on Martin Krygier’s Tempering Power
7. Macedo, Ronaldo, University of São Paulo Law School, Brazil: Tempering Power: Rule of Law beyond Legal Perspective
   Wang, Linghao, Zhe Jiang University: Tempering Power in the Age of Devices: Law, Technology, and Algorithmic Authority
   Wang, Yubo, Wuhan University School of Law: What Is the Rule of Law For? Arbitrariness and Teleology after Krygier
8. Zhai, Xiaobo, University of Macau: The Rule of Law and Arbitrary Power.
9. Zhang, Tu, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics: Tempering Power as the Point of Rule of Law: According to What? How to Temper?
10. Krygier, Martin: Responses