Social standards become cruel laws when they penetrate the legal and political machine

Evidence

Such changes take place whenever the legal and political machine is not separated from society so that social standards can penetrate into it and become political and legal rules. The seeming broad-mindedness that equates crime and vice, if allowed to establish its own code of law, will invariably prove more cruel and inhuman than laws, no matter how severe, which respect and recognize man’s independent responsibility for his behavior. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 258

Categorization

• DEFINE: A key mechanism: the separation of the legal/political realm from society is what protects individuals from social standards becoming punitive law. Carries directly into Arendt’s broader argument about the collapse of that separation.
• XREF: This is the scaffolding term the reader is after — social standards penetrating the legal machine. Connects to how Islamophobia’s ‘cultural’ judgments become legal/political exclusion. — connects to: Legal control over government officials reverses but extends social control. — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 93