Legal indicators: The power of quantitative measures of law

Abstract

Legal indicators, sometimes known as rule of law indicators, governance indicators, or indicators of public service performance, are quantitative measures of the performance of legal systems. They are used both as sources of knowledge about societies and as means of governing them (technologies of governance). As a result, these indicators have begun to attract considerable attention from scholars, policy makers, and other actors. Key issues include the following: When, why, and by whom are various kinds of legal indicators produced? Are they reliable and valid? How influential are they? Given their influence, should they be regulated, and if so, how? This article reviews recent efforts to answer these questions. The overarching theme is that all of these questions are related to one another.