A Review of Rogue Justice by Karen Greenberg

Rogue Justice:
The Making of the Security State
by Karen J. Greenberg

From my reading and experience, lawyers tend to see the law in one (or more) of five ways:

1) A necessary framework for civilization, one that keeps us (all of us) from descending into barbarism. Without a consistent and rational system of justice, we might as well go back to the caves and trees.
2) A useful tool for keeping the little people in line. The law is justification for hanging some and jailing others, and a cattle prod to keep the rest moving in the right direction.
3) An obstacle to getting the real work done. The law is only for the people who aren't smart enough or powerful enough to know what really needs to happen. Those who have a more informed perspective, must be able to bypass the law or at least reinterpret it to suite their purposes as required.
4) A protective cover for what would otherwise be considered criminal behavior. With the right spin and pressure, any law can be made to say anything, and that's a good thing for people who want to be able to do anything they want while staying "within the law."
5) A game to be used for the entertainment of lawyers, a professional, high stakes sport full of word games and logic puzzles, prizes and penalties. The only real losers are those who don't know the unwritten rules.

Of course, every lawyer operates in all five paradigms. They're just people, after all, and can't be expected to be 100% consistent. Unfortunately, the only thoroughly honorable approach to law (#1), pays the lowest dividends, so the legal profession attracts and encourages people who are drawn to the other four.

The men who wrote the United States Constitution tended toward idealism and wrote it with the assumption that their successors would also be men of honor and high ideals. The Bill of Rights almost didn't pass for just that reason. It didn't work out that way. We've been on a downhill slide ever since. Today, Washington is dominated by men and women who scoff at idealism, who sneer at honor, who hold the first way anathema and the others as religious dogma. Although they give lip service to the founders' intent, not one DC lawyer in a hundred believes in anything like those original principles. They would imprison Washington, Adams, Jefferson, et al, in a third world dungeon and label the tens of thousands of non-uniformed militiamen who fought for our liberty as "enemy combatants" unworthy of the respect that one human being owes to another. They are liars, torturers, thieves, and murderers. The best thing that could happen to the United States, would be a black hole that swallowed up everything in the Capital Beltway. That would be far too kind to the legal filth who wrote and continue to support the Patriot Act and the like.

My greatest complaint against Greenberg's book is that she was far too easy on too many people. This is the softball version of the story. Greenberg seems to have assumed at least good intent on the part of those who destroyed the United States--and I'm sure many of them actually had some good intentions--and gave a complete pass to some of the worst offenders. Maybe she feared for her life if she told us how bad it really is. I would, if I were her.

(Review based on a free advanced reader copy.)