McLaughlin College’s Annual Public Policy Lecture welcomes Stephen J. Toope

This year’s McLaughlin College Annual Public Policy Lecture will welcome Stephen J. Toope, vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge, to discuss “Our Age of Anxiety and the Rule of Law.”

Many people all around the globe feel uneasy, lost and anxious. A major contributor to our great unease is a widely perceived deficit of political legitimacy that has made it easier for populist nationalists to undermine liberal democracies.

To address that anxiety we must restore belief in our collective ability to build healthier societies. We need to do two things. One is to draw upon our shared history of making progress, flawed though the contemporary reality may be and will always be. The other way is to embrace an action-oriented pragmatist ethos. That ethos is particularly important as we seek to restore belief in the rule of law.

The rule of law is one of the great achievements of the modern world. Yet it is under deep threat. We need to reconstruct a rule of law for today, using our inherited intellectual resources. Toope proposes a recalibrated and revitalized rule of law for our age of anxiety.