Equal operation of law prevents officials escaping political backlash through selective enforcement.

Evidence

I regard it as a salutary doctrine that cities, states and the Federal Government must exercise their powers so as not to discriminate between their inhabitants except upon some reasonable differentiation fairly related to the object of regulation. This equality is not merely abstract justice. The framers of the Constitution knew, and we should not forget today, that there is no more effective practical guaranty against arbitrary and unreasonable government than to require that the principles of law which officials would impose upon a minority must be imposed generally. Conversely, nothing opens the door to arbitrary action so effectively as to allow those officials to pick and choose only a few to whom they will apply legislation and thus to escape the political retribution that might be visited upon them if larger numbers were affected. Courts can take no better measure to assure that laws will be just than to require that laws be equal in operation. — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process, 202

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Crystallizes equality as a restraint on arbitrariness via political-retribution mechanism — a genuinely dense institutional argument.
• XREF: Connects directly to the LGST institutional-roles thread: why generality is a check on power. — connects to: Conflicting statutory provisions can criminalize the very act the law says may be withheld — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 404; The rule of law is selectively enforced on racial groups framed as threats — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims: Race and Labor in…, 914; Privileged subgroups enforce stricter internal rules than the larger law. — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 6913 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• A judicial system can apply one restriction to minorities while exempting the majority #contradicts (0.90) — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist Ideology, 256
• The rule of law is selectively enforced on racial groups framed as threats #contradicts (0.85) — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 914
• Even unenforceable vice laws retained real deterrent bite through selective enforcement #complicates (0.80) — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 3360
• Authoritarian voters tolerate in-party political intimidation while condemning identical out-party acts. #complicates (0.80) — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1459
• Privileged subgroups enforce stricter internal rules than the larger law. #complicates (0.75) — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 6913
• Political society substitutes enforceable legal arrangements for unsafe human partiality. #expands (0.75) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1193
• Repeated police stops erode citizens’ sense of equal standing and legitimacy of law #complicates (0.72) — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 440