One of the things that makes America truly great is that we are ALL equal before the law. That’s the very bedrock of American Constitutional law – without equality before the law, the Constitution is about as effective as a Hallmark card versus the flu. Lovely sentiment, pass the cold medicine, thanks.
We make way too many excuses for the use of immunity. Prosecutors can’t get convictions without it. Companies won’t take risks without complete indemnity. Yada, yada, yada.
We pay prosecutors to do their jobs. We want the guilty punished, not the innocent. We want justice served, not meaningless conviction rates that only spell injustice. If they can’t do their jobs without resorting to bribery and blackmail, even if it is legalized, why the heck are we keeping these clowns on the payroll? Is the real job tough? Sure it is – and we pay accordingly. That’s no excuse for resorting to legalized corruption to get the job done.
If a company needs immunity to just do what it supposedly does best then it isn’t doing that job right. At all. We’re seeing some eye popping mismanagement coming out of Pfizer’s records – little wonder the FDA wanted them hidden away for seventy five years. They were hoping no one would be left alive who was mad enough to want a 100 year old retired CEO prosecuted. How about we skip the wait?
Pardons and reprieves are not the same thing. I see you typing in the comments. Pardons come after convictions and the first time a president or governor abuses that power, we can fix it. But in reality, abusing pardons is done on the way out the door. It’s something we need to fix alright but it’s not nearly as dangerous as granting immunity before the fact.
Thousands suffered adverse reactions to Pfizer’s human experiments and they are having a heck of a time suing. This should not be the case. But let’s get to the real elephant in the room.
Qualified immunity. I got elected so you can’t sue me, nyahh! This is the stupidest thing the Supreme Court has ever come up with. The color of authority shouldn’t make you immune from punishment for your personal bad acts. That is true for the cop and the politician. I can see adding a hearing to determine legitimacy – one that can be appealed, of course – in order to keep political activists from wearing down officials with frivolous lawsuits. But you’re not special just because you got a job and the law still applies to you just like everyone else.
So how do we fix this? Wait and hope the Supreme Court gets around to it? I’ll grant the Court has been on a roll of late. I’m cynic enough to think the upcoming midterms have a rol in that but being nice, they did do the right thing in a number of really egregiously bad cases. However, we had to wait forty-nine years for them to ditch Roe so maybe we should find another way.
Lucky for us, the Founding Fathers didn’t trust people with too much power and too little sense any more than most of us do. They left us a backdoor: constitutional amendment. Now, amending the Constitution isn’t something we should take lightly (unless we’re in Alabama where amending the state constitution is an election day hobby) but we’re talking about re-committing ourselves and our elected officials to the rule of law. That’s just about exactly the kind of thing the Founders had in mind for the constitutional amendment process.
Constitutional amendments can originate in two ways. The one we’ve always used is for the amendment to originate in Congress and be sent to the states for ratification. There’s a second way where the state legislatures originate the amendment but so far we’ve never successfully used it.
We are less than five months from the midterm elections. The final primaries will be in August. Any other year and I’d say that the race will be shaping up over the summer. This is probably the only time we’ll see in our lifetimes where the race was a foregone conclusion by August of the previous year. We can argue about the exact date – as late as February is probably reasonable – but the truth is the Democrats are facing a devastating loss in November and a very likely party collapse. Those don’t happen overnight which is why we could safely predict the midterms in general a year or more in advance this one time.
The Republicans will have an overwhelming majority in the House and a clear majority in the Senate by even the most conservative estimates. They will have a LOT of work to do and some real investigations and prosecutions to conduct if they don’t want to be replaced by a newly formed party in 2024. And yes, when one party collapses it is quite possible the other will soon follow as it has happened before in American history.
Maybe a constitutional amendment isn’t going to be a top priority out of the gate. That’s okay as long as the Republicans produce real tangible results. But by 2024, we should be able to pass an amendment finally ending the idiotic practice of giving out ‘get out of jail free’ cards at all.
We are a nation of laws, not men. That means everybody and his brother is equal before the law. No exceptions. Granting immunity, even with the best of intentions, creates a space in which some people have a free pass instead of being subject to the same laws as everyone else.
A level playing field is all the government is really supposed to provide. Restoring equality before the law restores equality to all.
