Political abuse of the law for party advantage, or to become authoritarian, weakens its power to protect everyone equally.
The main function of the law is to protect everyone equally from harm - and that includes protection from harm inflicted by politicians.
· Discriminatory legislation, by definition, fails to treat everyone equally. Afghan women 'banned from midwife courses' in latest blow to rights, for example, as the Taliban “has seen teenage girls unable to access secondary and higher education since August 2021”.
· Suppressing political opposition is a common political abuse of the law. It is a technique used by authoritarian politicians to cling onto political power. President Putin has often locked up or murdered political opponents, as when Putin critic Alexei Navalny dies in Arctic Circle jail.
· Partisan judicial appointments destroy the impartiality of the courts. This website has commented on Mitch McConnell’s contortions to increase the Republican majority in the US Supreme Court. This enabled the court to overturn the previous Roe v Wade judgement that had guaranteed women's constitutional right to abortion, for example.
· Weaponisation of the law to harm the reputation of political opponents has been a significant issue recently in America. Democrats and Republicans have accused each other of the practice. Donald Trump issued an executive order on 20 January 2025, Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government, claiming that:
“The American people have witnessed the previous administration engage in a systematic campaign against its perceived political opponents, weaponizing the legal force of numerous Federal law enforcement agencies and the Intelligence Community against those perceived political opponents in the form of investigations, prosecutions, civil enforcement actions, and other related actions. These actions appear oriented more toward inflicting political pain than toward pursuing actual justice or legitimate governmental objectives.”
· Presidential control of the law is a threat to freedom. “Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power” according to Vice-President JD Vance, but that is a clear violation of the separation of powers described earlier as a necessary check to avoid tyranny (5.2.8).
All the above examples of political abuse of the law reduce people's respect for it and prevent it from protecting them.
(This is an archive of a page intended to form part of Edition 4 of the Patterns of Power series of books. The latest versions are at book contents).