There’s been a lot of talk about the “rule of law” in the wake of the recent verdict in Manhattan against former President Donald Trump.
President Joe Biden said that “the American principle that no one is above the law was reaffirmed.” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., tweeted: “The rule of law still matters.”
The rule of law protects us from the law of the jungle, where people take what they want and life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” as English philosopher Thomas Hobbes put it.
History provides examples of what happens when political corruption undermines respect for the law.
In the fifth century, Priscus, a servant of one of the last Roman emperors, met a fellow Roman who lived at the court of Attila the Hun. (Yes, that guy.)
The Roman-citizen exile “explained that he could not tolerate the continual wards, corruption,…
