Right Thinking From The Left Coast
"To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing,
if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

The Other Foot
by Lee

Those Amurka-hating leftists over at Cato raise an interesting point.

Bush Administration appointees involved with issues such as the Iraq war and coercive interrogation of suspected terrorists probably don’t spend much time thinking about international tax policy, but they may rue the day that the Justice Department decided to persecute Swiss banks and Swiss bankers for obeying Swiss law and protecting the financial privacy of customers. What’s the connection? By going after Swiss banks and Swiss bankers in hopes of finding a few Americans who might be hiding money from the IRS, the Justice Department is embracing the notion that governments should not be constrained by national boundaries and national laws. Richard Rahn already has an excellent piece explaining why this is an absurd policy, but let’s consider some of the broader implications.

What if John Yoo or Donald Rumsfeld travel to Europe in the near future for business or personal reasons and some European government decides to throw them in jail for violating “international law”? This may sound fanciful, but German authorities already have moved in this direction by asserting universal jurisdiction, and it doesn’t take much imagination to foresee politically ambitious officials from other nations grabbing the baton.

I brought this up a few weeks ago and the general reaction from people here was that the idea of Europe prosecuting one of the administration’s players for international (i.e. war) crimes was ridiculous.  Well, it seems that, once again, it’s okay when we do it to them, but when they do it to us, well, that’s wrong.

Posted by Lee on 07/02/08 at 01:40 AM in Politics, Law, & Economics  • (17) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink • Discuss this in the forums
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