WJP Rule of Law Index

What It Is: The World Justice Project's annual Rule of Law Index, drawing on surveys of more than 215,000 households and 4,100 legal practitioners and scholars across 143 countries, scoring each country on eight factors — including Constraints on Government Powers, Absence of Corruption, Open Government, and Fundamental Rights — further broken into 44 sub-factors. 

Why It Matters: The 2025 edition found the global rule-of-law recession accelerating, with 68% of countries declining (up from 57% the prior year). The United States ranked 27th out of 143 countries, falling in seven of eight factors for the third consecutive year and ranking among the ten countries with the largest declines worldwide. 

How to Use It: Use the interactive country rankings to benchmark rule-of-law trends — and the specific factors driving them — in every market where your company operates, useful for enterprise risk assessments and board-level briefings on legal and regulatory exposure.