In late October, the World Justice Project (WJP) released its 2024 rankings for the rule of law of 142 jurisdictions. The top-ranked jurisdictions were Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden. The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region ranked 23rd, and the United Kingdom ranked 15th.
At a superficial level, this report seems harmless, even noble in its aims. However, reports and rankings of this nature raise concerns. The real purpose of such reports and rankings is to provide a first step toward a global system of governance in which every nation/jurisdiction, from capitalist to communist, cedes its legal system to an external body.
The WJP claims to have created a yardstick against which to measure and rank the rule of law for every jurisdiction. The purpose of such a yardstick is to put pressure on every country/jurisdiction to modify its legal system so as to gain a higher ranking as measured by that one yardstick. In using one yardstick, the WJP fails to take into account different cultures and belief systems operating in different jurisdictions. A one-size-fits-all ranking is based on the false assumption that individuals in different jurisdictions all want their legal systems to achieve the same objectives; namely, those defined and measured by the WJP.
Many nations ranked higher than the HKSAR by the WJP index deliver legal systems which enforce high taxes, a superficial democratic system, produce high numbers of violent crime, and prime ministers instructing judges what to do. Recently, seven-time world snooker champion Ronnie O’Sullivan chose to leave such a system operating in Britain in favor of low-tax, low-crime Hong Kong, where anyone can walk the streets day and night without being mugged. Thanks to international human rights laws operating in the United Kingdom and across Europe, violent crimes are a sad and regular occurrence in these higher-ranked countries.
The WJP rankings merely reflect the views of the authors and the global elites loyal to external organizations, and not their respective nations. ...The WJP rankings report should be viewed as another Trojan horse, and like all previous Trojan horses, it aims to create internal friction, undermine government and provide the first step toward transferring legal control away from nation-states to globalist elites
Once laws are determined by external forces, those same forces gain control of that country/jurisidiction by the back door. The WJP is the first step toward coaxing jurisdictions into giving away their legal system to an external body. Accordingly, the WJP should be viewed through this lens. This global legal system will then be used to transfer wealth and resources from nation-states to global elites as evidenced by the rise of international bodies accompanied by the concentration of wealth and power in fewer hands.
The WJP is another Trojan horse. Previous noble Trojan horses include reports and rankings on democracy and sustainability that have brought anarchy to many countries. The anti-extradition movement in 2019 delivered harm to the Hong Kong economy and disrupted the lives of many ordinary people. Sustainability protests continue to cripple many European economies where infrastructure, works of art and sports events are regularly attacked to the annoyance of ordinary citizens. This is by design.
The WJP and international bodies such as the United Nations and World Economic Forum do not want strong nation-states with patriotic populations. Rather, they want citizens to take the chameleon weapons of democracy, free speech and law rankings from their gifted Trojan horses and fight against their governments. Undermining national governments internally paves the way for the transfer of power and authority from individual nations to international institutions.
It is in the interests of these global institutions to ensure national leaders cede more power and physical resources to them through international agreements such as the Paris Agreement on climate change, the World Health Organization “pandemic treaty”, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development “taxation agreements”. Western politicians smoothing the way for a country to cede power to these external bodies are richly rewarded while their citizens become poorer.
Published annually since 2009, the rankings, the WJP claims, are “subject to a rigorous methodology, the index is used by governments, multilateral organizations, businesses, academia, media, and civil society organizations around the world to assess and address gaps in the rule of law”. The words “address gaps in the rule of law” make clear the intention of the WJP is for all nations to comply with an international global legal system.
The WJP claims to be “the world’s leading source of original, independent rule of law data. Its rigorous methodology draws on expert and household surveys to measure rule of law in 142 countries and jurisdictions, covering 95 percent of the world’s population”. On page 185 the report claims to present an image that accurately portrays the rule of law as experienced by ordinary people developed from variables drawn from over 214,000 households and 3,500 legal practitioners and experts in 142 countries and jurisdictions. Such a small number of households is hardly close to a representative sample of the estimated world population of 8.2 billion people.
Claiming the WJP represents the views of “ordinary people covering 95 percent of the world’s population” does not ring true. Prior to writing this article, I had not heard of the WJP rankings, so I asked a number of people if they had heard of them. The people I asked included wealthy barristers and solicitors and the more “ordinary people” of the kind the WJP claims to represent, such as joiners, plumbers and electricians from my hometown in Yorkshire, England. No one had heard of this report that claims to cover the views of 95 percent of the world’s population.
In reality, the WJP rankings merely reflect the views of the authors and the globalist elites loyal to external organizations, and not their respective nations. Despite clever language used across all 200-plus pages of the report to make it appear objective, these rankings are subjective. The surveys of “ordinary people” were carried out using closed questions. Closed questions limit the choice of responses and deny respondents the freedom to express a real view as all views are limited to the options allowed by the questionnaire’s authors.
Accordingly, the WJP rankings report should be viewed as another Trojan horse, and like all previous Trojan horses, it aims to create internal friction, undermine government and provide the first step toward transferring legal control away from nation-states to globalist elites.
The author has an LLM, is a barrister in England and Wales and a Hong Kong permanent resident.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
