French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

There is no such thing as the "rule of law." It is a political myth useful as an organizing principle for regime change or as a legitimizing myth for an established political class seeking stability, but that doesn't make Law sovereign. Political Will (in the form of those who control institutions) rules and makes the laws. The laws are "parchment barriers" if there is no political will with the force to impose laws.

It is 100% false that prosecuting current and former politicians strengthens law when we're talking above a certain low threshold of corruption. In those cases, it's up to the ruling class to police its own by using the legal code against low-level political figures and officials. The Chinese Communist Party operates this way more overtly but same principle. The incentive to do so is to strengthen the legitimacy of that ruling class, not because the law says you must.

According to the Law, you and I are committing "Three Felonies a Day". If the law were en vigueur then you and I and everyone else would be prosecutable 1984-style. It's at the whim of The Prosecutor to decide whether or not to pursue. Sound good to you? Me neither. The only thing stopping that is politics. When the political will is on the side of prosecution, then there will be prosecutions. We saw this with some heavy-handedness during the early days of the GWOT, 2020, Covid, hate speech legislation, many such cases.

The point being, interpretation of laws is a point of political conflict, often very sharp-elbowed. Even in the cases where laws are unambiguously stated (rare), there's still interpretation of the evidence, which doesn't happen in a political vacuum. Who would disagree?

You don't have to look far in history to see the abuse of the legal system in politics. Watergate is a prime example. Uninformed people think Nixon committed crimes and had to go. Anyone who spends just a little time looking at the details of that episode understands it as a political coup executed using lawfare. Whatever you think of Nixon's politics, the facts support that he was taken down by the anti-communist hawks in the defense establishment, largely in consequence of his opening up China. (The reasons were anti-USSR but given that China subsequently went from an agrarian backwater to a global competitor, one could debate whether they were right for the wrong reasons.)

Impeachment as a check/balance was just recently burned in Congress as a political tool to remove a sitting president. Extremely shortsighted. Or perhaps it just exposed it as a paper tiger. I thought it was burned when it was used against Clinton but it was only singed. Now it's completely discredited and no one will take it seriously ever again. That's the effect of abusing the law for political purposes.

What happened to the Roman Republic was overdetermined, but the Senate's threatened political prosecution of Caesar is historically understood to have been a motivating factor in his "crossing the Rubicon". If they hadn't threatened him with lawfare, would the Republic have survived a little longer? Perhaps.

> no such thing as the "rule of law." It is a political myth useful as an organizing principle

Everything we’re discussing is made up. That’s what social constructs like law, politics and language are.

> up to the ruling class to police its own by using the legal code against low-level political figures and officials. The Chinese Communist Party operates this way

You’re inspired by Legalism. It rejects the rule of law. It stands in conflict to the institutions of a republic, specifically, of voting.

(Also, the Chinese would execute someone for doing what Sarkozy or Trump did. Eliciting foreign interference in a domestic political contest and challenging the outcome of one with open violence. Former Presidents have been treated roughly for worse.)

> the Senate's threatened political prosecution of Caesar is historically understood to have been a motivating factor in his "crossing the Rubicon"

The Senate didn’t threaten Caesar with prosecution until after he crossed. Cato, personally, was threatening him.

> a political coup executed using lawfare

Impeachment and conviction is lawfare according to you?

> Now it's completely discredited and no one will take it seriously ever again. That's the effect of abusing the law for political purposes

It’s been “discredited” before. The teeth are in removal from office, not impeachment per se. (That’s just American civic ineptitude.)

To the extent that we’re abusing the law, you’re correct. I’ve seen serious brainstorming on how a D President can use Trump’s precedents to act swiftly ahead of Congress and the courts, for example, to accomplish policy goals that are popular but have been difficult to do precisely legally. If the President is above the law, he doesn’t need to worry about that constraint anymore.

> If they hadn't threatened him with lawfare, would the Republic have survived a little longer? Perhaps.

It did. Caesar didn’t end the Republic. That was his son, Octavius.

The point is when the Republic’s laws stopped applying to Caesar, it was effectively dead. There is no point calling for votes in that context.

We have a large number of authoritarian fascists in America. (There are also authoritarian leftists. They have not been politically empowered like the right has been.) The historic solutions to those were through law and then violence. If the law doesn’t apply, that leaves only violence. That’s civil war.

We’re not there yet. But we do need to make a concerted effort to ensure these folks are politically incapacitated while a basic civic education campaign can be completed, since basic concepts like “rule of law” isn’t taught outside the elites.

You’re citing history, ancient and modern, inaccurately to push an edgy narrative. I don’t know if you’re trolling or have been unwittingly trolled.

I'm not trolling, just disagreeing. I personally wouldn't argue that everything we're discussing is "made up." I'm arguing that "rule of law" is a particular legitimizing myth or political narrative used as a frame to block certain kinds of actions as being "out of bounds" but is not, in fact, sovereign, because a) "rule of law" has no autonomy or executive action without political will, and b) it is used primarily by constitutionalists or other so-called enlightenment rationalists as a kind of rear-naked choke or groin-strike to end debate. Unpacking the meaning of "law" quickly gives the lie to the whole charade. We are not "ruled" by law. That truly would be legalism (not something I'm inspired by, tbf). We're ruled by people who control the law and use it to achieve political ends. On a pedestrian scale, some of us are subject to the law and some of us are not. Not just political actors but also favored groups. I hope that's not controversial for you.

I don't want to digress into Ancient Roman history but it's specious to argue that Caeser was only threatened after he broke the law. That's just not a plausible reading of history. It's well-established that crossing the Rubicon was the culmination of political conflict with the Senate, not the inception. Octavian would not have been in a position to end the republic if not for his uncle.

Impeachment is lawfare, of course. It is almost by definition a political act of parties in Congress. What could be more lawfare than that? Use the courts to attack your political enemies. Removal from office in a western democracy is "mostly peaceful" but I agree that removal from office is the solution with teeth. The parent post is about prosecuting former heads of state. That's 3rd world shit. At least in the 3rd world you would do that to remove a rival. Here it just seems to be vindictive. At best a shot across the bow of Sarkozy's patrons. If that's the motivation it's at least understandable. My objection is when people are propagandized to the point of being traumatized by political fights that have zero impact on their lives.

I don't believe terms like "fascists" have any meaning in the current political discourse and immediately suspect people who use that term casually. If half the country is fascist then we've really lost the plot. Nor do I think narratives about civil war are creditable at this time. The sectarian ingredients are not present in this country. Bringing it up is an appeal to extremes to discredit the vast middle ground.

What is the curriculum of that "basic civic education" campaign you propose should be completed? Sounds ominous.