Book

Why the Rule of Law Is Not Sufficient, a groundbreaking book by Dr. Mahir Muharemović, LL.M, challenges the conventional understanding of a just society. It argues that while formal legal systems with clear statutes and impartial judges are essential, they are not enough to secure predictability, fairness, and communal trust. Instead, Muharemović posits that the "soft" web of social norms—the shared expectations and culture—is the hidden bedrock that makes legal rules meaningful and effective. The book is structured into three core movements. First, it delves into our evolutionary heritage and cognitive capacities to show how social norms guide behavior even before written law exists, drawing on evolutionary biology, social psychology, and complexity theory. The second part examines the state's role in creating and enforcing laws. It reveals the limitations of relying on law alone by exploring how formal institutions distill social norms into legal frameworks, but also how the vagueness of language and gaps between text and context leave room for discretion and evasion. Finally, the book synthesizes these ideas into a co-evolutionary view of law and culture, arguing that legal reforms will fail if they are not attuned to a community's moral convictions and civic habits. By illuminating the deep interdependence between norms and laws, Why the Rule of Law Is Not Sufficient offers a new blueprint for strengthening justice: not by writing more rules, but by cultivating the cultural soil in which those rules can truly take root. This book is a must-read for policymakers, practitioners, and curious citizens who are ready to see law not as the sovereign in society's drama, but as one actor among many in an ongoing, adaptive performance.