The chapter presents the Rule of Law as a normative ideal and its relevance for the Italian public administration. It argues that the rationale of the Rule of Law is to be found in the beneficial tension between the law produced by political institutions, on the one hand, and non-legislative law, beyond the purview of public power, on the other. Questioning thereby the usual relation with the stereotypes of the Stato di diritto and the principle of legality, the authors ask whether the Italian administrative law institutes commonly associated with the Rule of Law are really aligned with its rationale. Finally, a number of options to fill the gap between the Rule of Law and its concrete manifestations in Italian administrative law are discussed.