Measuring the Rule of Law in a Fracturing World: Global, UK and European Perspectives

Measuring the Rule of Law in a Fracturing World: Global Trends, the United Kingdom, and Subnational Perspectives from the EU

Speaker: Dr Ana Maria Montoya (Director of Data Analytics, World Justice Project)

Commentator: Prof Jeff King (UCL Laws)

Chair: Dr Claudia Sternberg (Head of Academic Programming | Principal Research Fellow, UCL European Institute)

About the talk

The global rule of law recession is accelerating. The World Justice Project (WJP) Rule of Law Index 2025 shows that 68% of countries experienced a decline in the past year, reflecting continued pressure on accountability, fundamental rights, and the institutions that protect them. This session will examine what these findings mean in practice by showing where erosion is most visible and how data can inform more grounded, people-centered policy decisions.

The discussion will then turn to the United Kingdom. While the UK has a strong rule of law, it is experiencing some challenges. In the 2025 Index, the UK ranks 14th out of 143 countries with an overall score of 0.78. Its position has slipped slightly, mainly due to modest changes in justice delivery. The presentation will also cover WJP EUROVOICES, which measures rule of law, justice, and governance across all 27 EU Member States and 110 subnational regions, including the rollout of new, comparable indicators on judicial independence at the subnational level. EUROVOICES helps decision-makers spot differences in outcomes within countries, set reform priorities, and engage more effectively with local institutions and communities.

The session will conclude with an outline of WJP’s current and upcoming work, including plans to promote judicial independence and inform rule of law debates in the United States. We will discuss how consistent, transparent indicators can support policy design, strengthen oversight, and improve public accountability in polarized environments.

Please note that this talk will be filmed and photographed for promotional and publicity purposes.

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About the Speaker

Dr Ana María Montoya leads data analytics and research operations for WJP’s portfolio of global, thematic, and country-specific reports, supporting the design of methodologies, surveys, and qualitative assessments. She is leading the adoption of cutting-edge methodologies, including artificial intelligence and large language models, to validate and enrich justice indicators. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Duke University. Her research examines judicial enforcement of land restitution and state compliance with property rights rulings in Colombia.

About the Commentator

Jeff King joined the UCL Laws in 2011 and has been Professor of Law since 2016. He is the Deputy Director of the Global Centre for Democratic Constitutionalism.  He sits on the Editorial Committees of the journals Public Law and the Federal Law Review, and on the General Council of the International Society of Public Law (ICON Society), and is a member of the Study of Parliament Group.  He was previously the Co-Editor of Current Legal Problems and the Co-Editor of the UK Constitutional Law Blog. Prior to coming to UCL, he was a Fellow and Tutor in law at Balliol College, and CUF Lecturer for the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford (2008-2011), a Research Fellow and Tutor law at Keble College, Oxford (2007-08), and an attorney at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP in New York City (2003-04). He has held visiting posts at the University of Oxford (2019-2022), University of Toronto (2013, 2020), Renmin University (Beijing), the University of New South Wales, and in 2014-15 was an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation visiting fellow at the Humboldt University of Berlin. His book Judging Social Rights (Cambridge University Press, 2012) won the Society of Legal Scholars 2014 Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship, and in 2017 he was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize in Law.

About the Chair

Dr Claudia Sternberg is a scholar of European and international politics whose work focuses on political power and authority, and on how ideas, ideologies, and narratives shape relations between citizens, states, and international organisations. She bridges theory and empirics by examining how concepts such as legitimacy and recognition are understood by different actors.

Her research includes influential work on the European Union’s struggle for legitimacy, tracing debates in public discourse and EU institutions, and a co-authored monograph on the Euro crisis that explores mutual recognition between Greeks and Germans. Her most recent edited volume, Parliament Buildings: The Architecture of Politics in Europe, examines how architecture and politics shape state–citizen relations.

Claudia joined UCL in 2015 after holding fellowships at Oxford and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. She trained at Cambridge, Yale, Sciences Po, and Freie Universität Berlin, and has received several major awards, including the UACES Best Book Prize.

Picture by Beate Vogl on Pexels