The rule of law and the inevitability of discretion

Whatever the President's choice, he could have explained it to the country in rhetoric formally consistent with the Rule of Law, but the catastrophic economic implications of default would presumably-and perhaps legitimately-have dominated the Administration's thinking. [...]it must be acknowledged that a government in which the "Rule of Law" is "conscientiously and systematically pursued" may, on rare and genuinely extraordinary occasions, still be a government in which other virtues take occasional priority.40 We want the Rule of Law-but perhaps not only the Rule of Law.