Hi Peter, thanks for doing these AMA's.
There has been so much in the news recently, both on immigration, birthright citizenship, potential suspension of habeas corpus, lack of due process, the effective setup of stateless regions (El Salvador), and other aspects that all boil down to a question that seems to be on a number of people's minds and centered on a single question.
While this is more of a generic question, it'd be nice to hear from an actual attorney that's practiced law.
When we speak of a 'rule of law', and its benefits to society, its generally understood from Civic's classes we all had to take, that there are components that must be met, which are not met under a 'rule by law'; the latter which is more generally understood to be common to totalitarian regimes where they do what they want with the tacit approval of kangaroo courts, usually with some sort of reference to Lavrentia Beria's infamous quote, "Show me the person I'll show you the crime".
While there is some debate on the specific components of a 'rule of law', they almost all require: Independent Objective Judiciary, Equality under the Law, Access to Justice, Fundamental Rights, and Transparency (if I'm remembering my civic's correctly).
The primary purpose and benefit to society of such being non-violent conflict resolution.
In many respects, in the past few decades, Judicial activism seems to have broken the first, Access to bring an action now requires access to a lawyer which in many cases is a retainer of an amount that exceeds the average person's yearly salary (unspent), Transparency seems to have largely vanished behind paywalls, bad laws, and contradictory readings.
The last remaining two are equality under the law, and fundamental rights which are directly tied to those other properties, and have been degraded by corporations in their legal actions and lobbying as a whole over time. The remaining components seem in dire jeopardy with stateless regions, which the court doesn't seem capable of addressing (given the other failures that have occurred over the past 20 years that remain broken).
I hear all the time that we have a country that has a rule of law, but that isn't what the average person is seeing when they look at these things objectively.
Just so you know, I've reached out to numerous attorney's for various contract issues over the years, the most recent related to professional certification where the company clearly failed in their obligations, but they also apparently have received broad indemnification via their government contracts. I mention this, so the perception is not just based on a trusted news initiatives media alone, but also backed by my own conversations seeking services that came from my state BARs referral service.
Is there something wrong with my understanding here? Do we actually still live in a rule of law? If my understanding is right, it doesn't seem like we do anymore.