This chapter introduces and criticises the common underlying features of mainstream approaches to the rule of law. However much they differ from each other, they have two unfortunate features in common. First, they all are responses to a prematurely posed question – what is the rule of law? Second, conventional answers – notwithstanding their many differences from each other – are drawn from within a common, narrowly and legalistically conceived, frame of options. They start by trying to delineate the legal anatomy of the rule of law rather than ask after what sort of problem it is supposed to solve. The chapter criticises this sort of approach wholesale rather than trying to choose retail between one or other examples on offer. The ingredients of a solution depend on what they do to help solve the problem. They cannot be read off from some preconceived list of legal forms and institutions. For, however intelligent and insightful any particular anatomical answers might be, they begin with the wrong question, and so their answers – some extremely intelligent – are, to real if varying extents, beside the point, and they suffer from seven characteristic weaknesses.