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đŸȘ” The Threshold

Public officials with state power can defy the law with near-impunity by prolonging litigation.

Properties2
tagsja-picks, xref, storystem, deepthinking, contrarian_or_surprising, trade, singleton, category/contrarian-or-surprising
aliases@caro_power_1974, loc. 969

4 min read

Public officials with state power can defy the law with near-impunity by prolonging litigation.

Evidence

Part of the reason was the Heckscher gift, of course. But a more basic one was that power—specifically, the power that came with the money he could dispose of as a state official—insulated him from the law’s retribution. He had been able to employ lawyers numerous enough and clever enough to utilize the technicalities of the law to frustrate the intent of the law, to throw enough sand into the machinery of justice to slow its gears sufficiently so that they could not mesh and produce the conclusion which its spirit demanded. Even an opponent as determined as W. Kingsland Macy—and as well equipped with money as Macy was—had had to abandon his search for ultimate justice. Justice delayed, the Taylor Estate case proved, was truly justice denied. And, Moses must have realized (for he demonstrated the realization in subsequent actions), as long as he had public power, as long as he was representing the state, he would have the means of employing as many lawyers as he needed, of delaying, and thereby denying, justice to his opponents, of shielding himself from its punishments. If there was one law for the poor, who have neither money nor influence, and another law for the rich, who have both, there is still a third law for the public official with real power, who has more of both. After the Taylor Estate fight, Robert Moses must have known—he proved it by his actions—that he could, with far more impunity than any private citizen, defy the law. He gloried in the knowledge; he boasted and bragged about it. For the rest of his life, when a friend, an enemy—or one of his own lawyers—would protest that something he was doing or was proposing to do was illegal, Moses would throw back his head and say, with a broad grin, a touch of exaggeration and much more than a touch of bravado: “Nothing I have ever done has been tinged with legality.” — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 969

Categorization

  • XREF: Connects to the Milgrom law-merchant material and general themes of institutional power defeating legal redress. — connects to: A third law favors public officials whose state power funds endless legal delay — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the
, 969; Officials can blur their lawbreaking by focusing public attention on popular ends — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the
, 958; Mystified arbitrary power becomes immune to legal restraint — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 628 (+4 more)
  • STORYSTEM: The ‘third law for the public official’ and the boast ‘Nothing I have ever done has been tinged with legality’ is a ready-made character signature for a corrupt-power figure in fiction.
  • DEEPTHINKING: Caro’s articulation that delaying justice is a power technique usable to deny it, and that state office grants a third tier of legal immunity beyond wealth itself, is a dense insight into how procedural weaponization works.

Broader Connections

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