"We are a government of laws. Any laws some government hack can find to louse up a man who's down"
About this Quote
Kempton’s specific intent is to puncture the self-congratulatory myth that legality equals justice. He’s not arguing against law as such; he’s arguing against the way law, in practice, becomes a bureaucrat’s alibi. "Hack" signals a system run less by statesmen than by functionaries with incentives: protect the institution, avoid blame, look tough, close the case. The person "who’s down" is doing crucial work here. Law’s harshness is rarely tested on the well-lawyered and well-connected; it’s tested on the already weakened - the poor, the accused, the politically expendable.
The context is mid-century American journalism’s moral x-ray: Kempton covered politics and courts when the rhetoric of order often masked the mechanics of punishment. His cynicism is not fashionable nihilism; it’s reportage distilled into a one-sentence indictment of how procedural correctness can become cruelty with paperwork.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Kempton, Murray. (2026, January 16). We are a government of laws. Any laws some government hack can find to louse up a man who's down. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-are-a-government-of-laws-any-laws-some-100020/
Chicago Style
Kempton, Murray. "We are a government of laws. Any laws some government hack can find to louse up a man who's down." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-are-a-government-of-laws-any-laws-some-100020/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"We are a government of laws. Any laws some government hack can find to louse up a man who's down." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-are-a-government-of-laws-any-laws-some-100020/. Accessed 19 Feb. 2026.









