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Comment by rwmj | Hacker News Reader

So I'll put forward a controversial, but hopefully true point: If you believe in the Rule of Law, then Snowden should be tried, and probably will be found guilty, for a fairly clear breach of the law. The US President is bound by the constitution to use every means available to go after him.

Presidential pardons, although they are part of the US consitution and therefore strictly speaking part of the Rule of Law, are very capricious tools and not really in the spirit of it.

Of course this is why we shouldn't have secret laws or secret parts of government, and national parliaments weren't doing their job to get us into this situation in the first place. And we weren't doing our job either, by not holding politicians to account and being apathetic about voting.

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I believe in the "Rule of Law" as a general concept necessary to a functioning society. I do not believe in it as a dogmatic application of The Law Über Alles, where the text of a law takes thoughtless precedence over the moral principle it was meant to establish.

You imply such a thing as prosecutorial discretion does not exist. It does and always has.

When one breaks a law to bring light to greater wrongdoings, the only just thing to do is pardon the original transgression.

So what you're saying is, you'd pardon someone who broke a law against torture and saved lives by so doing. After all, the torturer "[broke] a law to bring light to greater wrongdoings", and "the only just thing to do is pardon the original transgression."

(If you reply at all, you will of course weasel out of this with "torture never works and you're a horrible person besides", but I find it amusing enough, to point out that your argument easily justifies torture, that I'll do so despite the near certainty you'll dodge the point instead of considering it.)

Granting a pardon does not justify the crime.

Let's say we have a convicted murderer that committed the act when they were very young, he admitted to it with remorse, the victim's family has no vengeance in their hearts, and he spent 50 years in prison for the crime. Just because the governor issues a pardon to let the old man out to die in peace with family doesn't mean the governor is justifying the original crime.

I find it amusing enough, to point out that your argument easily justifies torture

The moral standard behind the various "torture is not allowed" laws and proclamations is twofold:

1) Destroying people is bad mmkay? I think we can all agree on that.

2) It recognizes that any intelligence needs can be met by forms of interrogation that don't use such tactics.

And a not-at-all-morally-related but still valid reason is:

3) Using it carries very bad consequences for the perpetrators, PR, public support, support from allies, giving people who don't like you a reason to attack you.

So no, my argument justifies no such thing.

If you reply at all, you will of course weasel out of this by willfully twisting my words again to fit whatever you think they meant instead of what I actually wrote.

You can't have it both ways. Either the president is bound by the letter of the constitution, or its spirit. If by the letter, he has the power to issue a pardon. If by the spirit, he need not use "every means available" to persecute Snowden.

Consider also, the opposite case. During the Iraq war, the US government tortured people. That is clearly against both US and international law. Yet the president and his justice department have done nothing to "go after" those responsible, much less "use available means." Does this conform with either the spirit or the letter of the constitution?

> If you believe in the Rule of Law, then Snowden should be tried, and probably will be found guilty, for a fairly clear breach of the law.

This is circular reasoning. The government has made it (for all practical purposes) illegal for anyone to reveal its own lawbreaking. Obsessing over the lesser breach of the law committed by Snowden while ignoring the government's greater (in degree and in quantity) breach of the law is hypocrisy, and contrary to justice.

> The US President is bound by the constitution to use every means available to go after him.

No, the US President is an executive, not an automaton.

> national parliaments weren't doing their job...

Every check that was in place to prevent this situation has evidently failed. The best solutions (or even the good ones) may not lie within the established body of law.

"If you believe in the Rule of Law"

You do know how loaded that statement is, right? It can not work in isolation. For it to work, you must also believe in the court's ability to fairly apply this rule of law, and in the people who create the laws in the first place. No rational person can believe in the rule of law in isolation.

For example, dictators create laws to protect their own power, worse, to defeat any opposition. Would you ask someone who lives under the rule of a dictator is they believe in the rule of law?

The president is also bound by his oath to protect the constitution... Which arguably he is not doing. So either the constitution is out the window already for him or it isn't. Or you can have your cake and eat it too... Either or.

I think you're missing the point of the article. Having slaves used to be legal in the US, but slave-owners still happened to be on the wrong side of history. Many people knew it then already.

Come now, Citizen! "Rule of Law"? How old-fashioned of you!

Snark aside, what I don't understand is this: If it means so damned much to Snowden that he should expose all these supposedly horrible supposed abuses, then why isn't he willing to suffer the consequences of his treasonous actions?

The original article is so hot to compare Snowden with Dr. King, but what everyone seems to ignore is that Dr. King did not seek to escape the consequences of his actions. Indeed, he turned those consequences into a cornerstone of his arguments, and they were in large part what drove his movement to eventual victory.

Dr. King and his confederates in the Civil Rights movement, put simply, possessed the courage of their convictions. Edward Snowden, by comparison, has shown nothing but cowardice; having stolen the secret documents on which Glenn Greenwald is turning such a tidy reputational profit, Snowden fled like the thief he is and begged asylum from nations which, while not belligerent enemies of the United States, certainly have no reason to wish us well.

In short, the man is no lion, but a weasel; no hero, but an arrant coward. Have we, in a few short decades, become so debased, so degraded, that no one can any longer tell the difference?

I find your demand that heroes be martyrs particularly bizarre.

Wow, how hateful of you. Do you not see the obviously glaring difference between the two?

I don't believe that Dr. King had the likelihood of being tortured and executed by his own government for pointing out the mistreatment, illegal or otherwise, of his people by that very government.

I do believe that Snowden is under a direct threat of possible execution and potentially being tortured, depending on the current definition of torture I suppose, by his own government for pointing out the illegal activities of said government aimed at its citizens.

You complain the post is hot to compare the two, maybe you should refrain from doing the same.

Snowden has shown the government to be corrupt in his eyes and now you expect him to directly face that very government on their grounds and on their terms? That seems to be a foolish thing to do. You may label the man however you like, I'll wait to see how history plays out a bit and see more of the evidence before making a judgement.

So, if MLK had left the country to avoid prison or execution (all other events having been identical) he would have been a "weasel"?

What a bone-headed defense of the status quo, using the name of a man who gave his life fighting against it.

The consequences for Dr. King's actions were not three decades in solitary. The consequences for Snowden's actions - effective banishment from his home, separation from family and friends (and girlfriend) - are actually more severe than the (collectively) several months King spent in jail. This is not to detract from the greatness of Dr. King - he stood up also to violence and more - but to say that they faced very different systems.

However, given what we know about the current state of the things you list in your last paragraph, it would be incredibly naive to expect the Rule of Law to be upheld in the case of Snowden (and most likely also Assange).

Also, I'm no American, but doesn't your president have some leeway in deciding who his administration will go after and who walks free? For instance, I'm sure they would go after any intelligence agent that lies to congress under oath.

Haaaaaaaaclapper!

Gesundheit.

Thank You.

Clapper even admitted to lying to congress and there will be nothing done about it. So much for 'rule of law'

Historically presidential pardons have been constrained enough so that it is in the spirit of the rule of law. The law uses it as an out in the cases of laws needing correction, same as the constitutional amendment system.

> So I'll put forward a controversial, but hopefully true point: If you believe in the Rule of Law, then Snowden should be tried, and probably will be found guilty, for a fairly clear breach of the law.

There was a time when it was illegal to leave East Germany for West Germany. If the border patrouls catched you doing that they were allowed - by law - to shoot you. When you were catched and didn't get shot you were judged by the judges of East Germany because you broke the law ('Republikflucht', i.e. "desertion of the republic", see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republikflucht). The law was quite clear here, but most people don't accept that you should be shot or put on trial for trying to leave your country.

There are many others examples, from history (think about a certain time in german history for the most famous example) or current: North korea, China and so on.

So, the question I put forward against your point is: The USA can judge him as long as they want, but does he have to go back and accept their judgement? because of "rule of law"? I'd say no, but the debate is still open.

"No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree. The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law. These two evils are of equal consequence, and it would be difficult for a person to choose between them."

-Frédéric Bastiat

If you believe in the rule of law; Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and even Powell would all be on death row - the heads of Bank of America, HSBC, Wells Fargo and Wachovia (former) and Goldman Sachs would all be rotting in prison.

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