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Weekly Update


In this last Weekly Update of 2020, we at the Bingham Centre would like to express our deep appreciation to you, our readers, for your loyal support of the Centre.

2020 has been an extraordinarily difficult year for the entire world, and the extraordinary and unprecedented challenges of a global health emergency have subjected the Rule of Law, already under severe strain in many of our democracies, to new stresses.

It is good to be able to close the year, therefore, with a Rule of Law good news story

This week, the US Electoral College brought to an end perhaps the most extraordinary chapter in the history of President Trump's disregard for the Rule of Law. His campaign to undermine the legitimacy of the election of his opponent Joe Biden was a concerted attempt to persuade State officials at various levels in the US that the outcome of the popular vote was fraudulent. As President-Elect Biden pointed out, all of those officials - electoral officials, state legislators and governors, state and federal judges, and ultimately the US Supreme Court itself - listened to President Trump's arguments, but rejected them as being without merit.

So ends a period of extraordinary challenge for the Rule of Law in one of the democracies which historically been one of its main proponents globally, whichever party has been in power. While the detailed story of the resilience of the US's Rule of Law institutions remains to be written, a page has surely been turned on this most difficult period.

Read our full Weekly Update here, and may we wish you a merry Christmas.

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