Justice & Law Quote by Edward Bennett Williams

The line lands like a shrug with teeth: a lawyer refusing to pretend that proximity to power is an ethical crisis rather than a predictable feature of American life. Edward Bennett Williams isn’t offering a lofty defense of virtue; he’s puncturing the performative scandal around it. The rhetorical question is doing the heavy lifting. By framing the objection as absurd on its face, he flips the burden of proof onto the critic: if friendships inevitably cross into public office, are we really going to demand professional self-erasure as the price of integrity?

Williams knew the ecosystem he’s describing. As a famously connected Washington attorney, he moved in circles where dinner companions could become Cabinet secretaries, prosecutors, or presidents. The context is the mid-century capital where “influence” wasn’t a dirty word so much as a currency, and where the line between civic service and private practice was policed more by optics than by bright rules.

The subtext is a defense of normalization: relationships are not contraband; the system is built on them. That’s also the provocation. He’s implicitly challenging the idea that corruption only appears when it’s personal, when in reality the larger machinery - access, elite networks, institutional favoritism - hums along regardless of anyone’s moral narrative. The dash in the middle mimics his impatience, an audible pivot from accusation to common sense. It’s a one-sentence portrait of Washington’s favorite alibi: if you can make the arrangement sound inevitable, you don’t have to justify it.