Rule of law is a concept that is regularly debated by legal philosophers, often in connection to discussion of the concept of law. In this article, the focus is not on the substance of the conceptual claims, but on the methodologies employed by legal philosophers, investigating seminal articles on the rule of law by Joseph Raz and Jeremy Waldron. I argue that their philosophical argumentations often crucially depend on empirical or legal doctrinal arguments. However, these arguments remain underdeveloped. I explore how these arguments could be linked to approaches related to rule of law in different fields of legal scholarship and investigate how the methodologies of these fields may complement each other. Thus, the article aims to provide an argument for a specific form of triangulation of three kinds of approaches to the rule of law: philosophical, socialscientific and legal doctrinal. This method of triangulation is illustrated by a discussion of the World Justice Project's Rule of Law Index.

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for their helpful comments on previous versions of this article, and Jacqueline Brand, Alma Besic, Lieske Bottema and Haris Sabanovic for providing assistance with the research in various ways. This article is part of a series. In a second article, we hope to discuss the various purposes for which doctrinal scholars can use philosophy. 2In the Common Law tradition, the focus on doctrinal research is less dominant than in the Civil Law tradition (Van Gestel, Micklitz & Rubin 2017;Kumm 2009).

This contribution discusses the links between Martin Krygier's and Philip Selznick's work on the ideal of the rule of law. The way Krygier explains and reconstructs Selznick's theory is helpful, and yet raises questions about the content and application of the ideal. Understanding the development of the rule of law and the interrelation with another central legal ideal, justice, requires not only a realistic assessment but also a theoretical engagement with the ideals at stake.