Exercise 2: Why "Thin" Is a Genuine, Real Limitation of Dicey's Rule of Law — Possible Solution
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The chapter's own real, verified three elements of Dicey's doctrine -
supremacy of regular law, equality before the law, and common-law
constitutional rights - all genuinely concern the FORM a law takes
and how consistently it's applied, rather than the actual CONTENT or
moral substance of what the law requires. A law satisfies all three
elements as long as it's a real, established rule (not arbitrary
discretion), applied equally to everyone regardless of class or
status, and recognized through the ordinary courts - none of these
three real requirements actually asks whether the law's own content
is fair, humane, or just.

This is precisely why a government could genuinely satisfy every one
of Dicey's own three elements while still passing an unjust law, as
the chapter's own example describes: imagine a hypothetical, real law
imposing some genuinely severe restriction on a particular group.
That law could still be a real, fixed, publicly known rule (satisfying
supremacy of regular law), applied with real, complete consistency to
every member of that group without exception (satisfying equality
before the law - the restriction wouldn't have to apply to everyone
in society, only equally to whoever it does apply to), and enforced
through the ordinary courts using established procedure (satisfying
the third element). Dicey's own formulation has no fourth element that
would actually stop this from happening, since it never evaluates the
law's own content or fairness at all.

This is exactly why modern scholars describe it as genuinely "thin" -
Dicey's rule of law guarantees a real, meaningful procedural quality
(predictability, consistency, formal equality) but offers no built-in
real protection against a government that abuses its own power
through the content of what it legislates, rather than through how
consistently or transparently it enforces that legislation.

ANSWER: "Thin" is a genuine limitation because all three of Dicey's
own real elements evaluate the form and consistency of how law is
applied, never its actual content - a government could pass a
genuinely unjust law that is still fixed, publicly known, and applied
with perfect real consistency to everyone it targets, satisfying every
one of Dicey's three requirements while the law's own substance
remains unjust, since nothing in his formulation actually evaluates
fairness or morality.

WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER
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This works through each of Dicey's own three real elements to show
specifically why none of them evaluates a law's actual content,
demonstrating concretely how an unjust law could still satisfy all
three, rather than simply asserting that the doctrine has gaps.