At the heart of the word "formalism," in many of its numerous uses, lies the concept of decisionmaking according to rule. Formalism is the way in which rules achieve their "ruleness" precisely by doing what is supposed to be the failing of formalism: screening off from a decisionmaker factors that a sensitive decisionmaker would otherwise take into account. Moreover, it appears that this screening off takes place largely through the force of the language in which rules are written. Thus the tasks performed by rules are tasks for which the primary tool is the specific linguistic formulation of a rule. As a result, insofar as formalism is frequently condemned as excessive reliance on the language of a rule, it is the very idea of decisionmaking by rule that is being condemned

DEFINE: Explains formalism as rule-based decisionmaking that screens off other factors

Frederick Schauer, Frederick Schauer - Formali…, loc. 9