Justice & Law Quote by James Bovard

Bovard’s line is built to do two things at once: consecrate the American founding as an unthreatening civic ideal, then indict the present as a betrayal so blunt it sounds almost physical. He opens with a catechism of legitimizing phrases - “rule of law,” “equality before the law,” “no one above the law” - not to argue them, but to summon them as a shared memory. Calling that vision “very viable” is a sly move: it refuses the comforting excuse that the founders’ principles were naive or obsolete. The failure, he implies, isn’t conceptual. It’s moral and institutional.

Then comes the pivot: “instead of that.” The contrast is not policy-versus-policy; it’s civilization-versus-crowd. “Quasi mob rule” is carefully calibrated outrage. “Mob rule” alone would be pure alarm; “quasi” adds a libertarian journalist’s fingerprint - a claim that our systems still wear the costume of legality (courts, procedures, official rhetoric) while operating with the logic of selective enforcement, factional payback, and public intimidation. It suggests a state that prosecutes like a clan and governs like a pressure campaign.

Contextually, Bovard has spent decades critiquing executive power, surveillance, and bureaucratic impunity. This quote fits that project: it frames contemporary politics as a drift from neutral rules to situational justice, where status and allegiance determine consequences. The subtext is less “society is chaotic” than “authority has learned to outsource its lawlessness to the crowd - and then call it democracy.”