Stephen Daly, King's College London

That the Rule of Law is an “essentially contested concept”, like Democracy, Human Rights and Legitimacy, prompts scholarly inquiry. Many scholars discuss the Rule of Law at a level of abstraction, sometimes entirely divorced from any particular field of law. Whilst there is value in such analyses, so too is there a place for sector specific studies of how the Rule of Law manifests itself. For this purpose, the rules governing tax administration in Germany, the UK and the US, specifically with regards those tax authorities’ management powers and collection powers, are chosen to articulate several arguments about the Rule of Law. First that Rule of Law compliance should be judged against the system as a whole as opposed to discrete aspects of a given system. Secondly, that Germany and the UK do exhibit fidelity to different accounts of the Rule of Law. Thirdly, nevertheless, that administrative tax systems can be differently constituted does not mean that they subscribe to different accounts of the Rule of Law.