World Justice Project
Rule of Law Index®

The WJP Rule of Law Index is a new quantitative assessment tool designed by The World Justice Project to offer a detailed and comprehensive picture of the extent to which countries adhere to the rule of law in practice.

1. Limited Government Powers 
2. Absence of Corruption 
3. Order and Security 
4. Fundamental Rights
5. Open Government 
6. Effective Regulatory Enforcement 
7. Access to Civil Justice 
8. Effective Criminal Justice
9. Informal Justice

These nine factors are further disaggregated into 52 sub-factors. Together, they provide a comprehensive picture of rule of law compliance.

The Index's rankings and scores are built from over 400 variables drawn from two new data sources:

• A general population poll (GPP) conducted by leading local polling companies using a probability sample of 1,000 respondents in the three largest cities of each country.
• Qualified respondents' questionnaires (QRQ) completed by in-country experts in civil and commercial law, criminal justice, labor law, and public health.

To date over 66,000 people and 2,000 experts have been interviewed in 66 countries. The outcome of this exercise is one of the world's most comprehensive data sets measuring the extent to which countries adhere to the rule of law-not in theory but in practice.

The Index was made possible by funding from the Neukom Family Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and LexisNexis among others. A statistical sensitivity and reliability analysis of the Index data was conducted by the Econometrics Unit of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre.