With Liberty and Justice for Some: Six Questions for Glenn Greenwald by Scott Horton
December 16, 2011
In the wake of September 11, Glenn Greenwald emerged as the nations premier chronicler of the war that U.S. officials waged on the nations civil liberties under the pretext of battling terrorists. Persistent and technically skilled, he played a key role in unmasking shameless betrayals by government attorneys of their oath to uphold the lawexposing those who enabled the torture of prisoners, the introduction of a massive warrantless surveillance system, and the merciless war against loyal Americans who attempted to blow the whistle on such abuses. I put six questions to Greenwald about his new book, With Liberty and Justice for Some, which examines the emerging doctrine of impunity for politically powerful elites in the United States:
1. You start your account of the doctrine of elite immunity in the United States with Gerald Fords decision to pardon Richard Nixon. How did this one decision, among the numerous incidents you describe, provide a point of rupture in the nations rule-of-law tradition?
American history is suffused with violations of equality before the law. The country was steeped in such violations at its founding. But even when this principle was being violated, its supremacy was also being affirmed: resoundingly and unanimously in the case of the founders. That the rule of lawnot the rule of menwould reign supreme was one of the few real points of agreement among all the founders. Arguably it was the primary one.
Theres an obvious element of hypocrisy in this fact; espousing a principle that one simultaneously breaches in action is hypocrisys defining attribute. But theres also a more positive side: the countrys vigorous embrace of the principle of equality before law enshrined it as aspiration. It became the guiding precept for how progress was understood, for how the union would be perfected.
in full: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2011/12/hbc-90008356