Law of Rules

It's a stereotype that Conservatives care more about rules, law and order than Liberals do, at least here in the United States. This stereotype is mostly one of branding; the Rule of Law tends to be employed as a punishment for being frightening and/or unpopular as, if not more, often then it is used in response to misbehavior. And people of all political persuasions tend to have a greater interest in rules that protect their interests than they do in rules as a general concept.

And so it was that left-leaning media outlets spent a lot of time openly fretting and clutching their metaphorical pearls in the run-up to the recent mid-term elections, when it looked like devotees of former President Donald Trump and the "Stop the Steal" mythology might carry the day and install themselves as Secretaries of State and other elections officials in jurisdictions dotted around the nation. The clear concern was that such people would actively interfere in elections, pushing the nation towards "autocracy" and away from "the rule of law."

But I think that human nature is something of a constant, and so it was that National Public Radio published an article with the headline "The U.S. moves to shield Saudi crown prince in journalist killing." The article, sourced from the Associated Press is basically a litany of activist complaints about the fact that the Biden Administration has concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is entitled to the same sovereign immunity for lawsuits in American courts that any other head of state or head of government would be. The end of the article points out speaks about some of the details of sovereign immunity, but, for the most part, the article comes across as outrage mining.

I'm not sure, however, what there is to be outraged about. Sovereign immunity is not a new concept, nor is it a particularly contentious one. The fact that it gets in the way of Crown Prince bin Salman being hauled into an American court does not change that. People being of the opinion that the Crown Prince is an oppressor and tyrant is not a valid reason for the current Administration (or any other, really) to decide that the precedent of sovereign immunity should be thrown out, or even that an exception be made in this particular case.

This is the primary driver of "threats to the rule of law;" the idea that sometimes, the letter and/or the spirit of the law come between someone and the outcome that they understand themselves to be entitled to. Whether that is considered a good a bad thing often rests not on an understanding of the law and its purposes, but on who a particular party is more sympathetic to, or which interests are being served. It does little good to wring one's hands about the decline of lawfulness, when one is only concerned with the laws that are found to be to one's benefit.