The common law consists of legal rules, principles, and standards. Common law legal rules are relatively specific legal norms that require actors to act or not act in a specified way, enable or disable specified types of arrangement, or set remedies for specific wrongs. In contrast, legal principles are relatively general legal norms. Because of their generality, legal principles can generate, explain, and justify legal rules, while, because of their specificity, legal rules normally cannot generate, explain, or justify either legal principles or other legal rules. And because of their specificity, most legal rules can determine cases with little or no elaboration. In contrast, most legal principles must be elaborated to determine cases. As used in the common law, the term standard has three different meanings: it may be used as a collective noun that includes all legal norms; it may be used to mean extremely general legal norms; or it may refer to legal rules that are not applicable at the time they are adopted because they are designed to be further elaborated, usually by administrative agencies.

This chapter deals with the relationship of the particular to the general in the practice of law in three stages. It begins by examining the conception of the rule and its general and abstract character in the doctrine and theory of law. It then “re-specifies” the question from a praxeological viewpoint; that is to say it deals with it from the point of view of practitioners and users of law. Finally, it addresses the issue of Islam in French public and legal life, through the so-called “burkini affaire” and the resulting judgment of the Council of State (Conseil d’État), which gives us the opportunity to examine how the question of the general and particular dimensions of the legal rule applies in context, contingently, at three levels: that of “public opinion,” which is polarized around the question of the degree of particularism admissible in public life; that of the regulatory authority, which establishes a rule starting from a particular case; and that of the judging authority, which decides a particular case on the basis of general rules.

We want to describe how judges play by, and with, legal rules. It appears that, on the one hand, even in cases in which the legal basis is thin or absent, judges seek rules on which to base their decisions. In that sense, judges are positivist legal practitioners who need legal rules to perform their professional duties. On the other hand, however, moral considerations seem to deeply influence the same judges’ legal cognition. We aim to show how this unfolds in the concrete settings of four countries – Indonesia, Lebanon, Egypt, and Senegal – in cases relating to male homosexuality. First, we outline the legal and judicial frameworks of the four countries being studied. Second, we concentrate on cases in these countries related to homosexuality. On the basis of these court cases, third, we analyze the reference to rules as the core of the life of law, although in a qualified manner. Finally, we draw together the main lines of the debate regarding rules, their indeterminacy and their interpretation, stressing the usefulness of a praxeological treatment centered on reasoning, justification, and decision-making practices to better understand the ways in which law lives through rules.