[NYTr] Beyond the Rule of Law: Concentrated Power

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Counterpunch - Oct 27, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/nader10272007.html


Concentrated Power

Beyond the Role of Law

By RALPH NADER

Every law student promptly learns the national ideal that our country
is governed by the rule of law, not the rule of men. Today, the rule of
law is under attack.

Such activities have become a big business and, not surprisingly, they
have involved big business.

On October 25th, Secretary Condoleeza Rice officially recognized before
a House Oversight Committee that, remarkably, there was no law covering
the misbehavior of Blackwater Corporation and their private police in
Iraq.

Any crimes of violence committed by Blackwater and other armed
contractors commissioned by the Defense and State Departments to
perform guard duty and other tasks, fell into a gap between Iraqi law,
from which they have been exempted by the U.S. military occupation and
the laws of the United States.

Since the United States government is ruled by lawless men in the White
House who have violated countless laws and treaties, Bush and Cheney
clearly had no interest in placing giant corporate contractors
operating inside Iraqi jurisdiction under either the military justice
system or the criminal laws of the United States.

Presidential power has accumulated over the years to levels that would
have alarmed the founding fathers whose constitutional framework never
envisioned such raw unilateral power at the top of the Executive
branch. Accordingly, they only provided for the impeachment sanction.
They neither gave citizens legal standing to go to court and hold the
Presidency accountable, or to prevent the two other branches from
surrendering their explicit constitutional authority-such as the
war-making power-to the Executive branch. The federal courts over time
have refused to adjudicate cases they deem "political conflicts"
between the Legislative and Executive branches or, in general, most
foreign policy questions.

Being above the law's reach, Bush and Cheney can and do use the law in
ways that inflict injustice on innocent people. Politicizing the
offices of the U.S. Attorneys by the Justice Department, demonstrated
by Congressional hearings, is one consequence of such Presidential
license. Political law enforcement, using laws such as the so-called
PATRIOT Act, is another widespread pattern that has drag netted
thousands of innocent people into arrests and imprisonment without
charges or adequate legal representation. Or the Bush regime's use of
coercive plea bargains against defendants who can't afford leading,
skilled attorneys.

Books and law journal articles have been written about times when
government violates the laws. They are long on examples but short on
practical remedies of what to do about it.

Corporations and their large corporate law firms have many ways to
avoid the laws. First, they make sure that when Congress writes
legislation, the bills advance corporate interests. For example,
numerous consumer safety laws have no criminal penalties for the
violations, or only the most nominal fines. The regulatory agencies
often have very weak subpoena powers or authority to set urgent and
mandatory safety standards without suffering years or even decades of
corporate-induced delays.

If the laws prove troublesome, the corporations make sure that
enforcement budgets are ridiculously tiny, with only a few federal cops
on the beat. The total number of Justice Department attorneys
prosecuting the corporate crime wave of the past decade, running
investors, pensioners and workers into trillions of dollars of losses
and damaging the health and safety of many patients and other
consumers, is smaller than just one of the top five largest corporate
law firms.

Out in the marketplace, environment and the workplace, the corporations
have many tools forged out of their unbridled power to block aggrieved
people from having their day in court or getting agencies or
legislatures to stand up for the common folk.

Companies can wear down or deter plaintiffs from obtaining justice by
costly motions and other delaying tactics. When people get into court
and obtain some justice, the companies move toward the legislature to
restrict access to the courts. This is grotesquely called "tort
reform"-- which takes away the rights of harmed individuals but not the
corporations' rights to have their day in court.

Lush amounts of campaign dollars grease the way for corporations in the
legislatures in the fifty states and on Capitol Hill.

As if that power to pass their own laws is not enough, large
corporations become their own private legislatures. You've been
confronted with those fine-print standard form agreements asking you to
sign on the dotted line if you wish to secure insurance, tenancy,
credit, bank services, hospital treatment, or just a job.

Those pages of fine print are corporations regulating you! You can't
cross any of them out.

You can't go across the street to a competitor- say from Geico to State
Farm, or from Citibank to the Bank of America, because there is no
competition over these fine-print contracts, with their dotted
signature lines. Unless, that is, they compete over how fast they
require you to give up your rights to go to court or to object to their
unilaterally changing the terms of the agreement, such as in changing
the terms of your frequent flier agreement on already accumulated miles

Oh, for the law schools that provide courses on the rule of men over
the rule of law.

Oh, for the time when there when there will be many public interest law
firms working just on these portentous dominations of concentrated
power to deny open and impartial uses of the laws to achieve justice
and accountability.

Ralph Nader is the author of The Seventeen Traditions