Mirsky: Supporting Truth, Justice, And The American Way

I am writing to you from Exeter, NH, one of the old leadership towns of the American Revolution. We value America’s history in this town, and we are fully engaged in preparing for a better future for America as well. So here's the thing: I used to watch the “Superman” TV show in black and white, starring George Reeves as Superman, and Superman had a motto: He was the champion of “Truth, Justice, and the American Way.”

Another way to put this is something that lawyers have been thinking about a lot since January of this year, which is “The Rule of Law.” The Rule of Law is important, it may seem bothersome on a case by case level; you might not like what happens in every criminal trial or with every decision of an appellate court. But the Rule of Law is important in terms of what it protects on an everyday basis.

The Rule of Law protects everybody. The Rule of Law is necessary in order to prevent countries in general from becoming dangerous, miserable, unfair, and irrational places in which to live.

For example, the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. That means that the Government is not permitted to search your house without first getting a search warrant based on a reasonable expectation of finding evidence of a crime in your house. This is a right of all Americans, regardless of your political views, regardless of where you come from, or what you look like. If we didn’t have the Fourth Amendment, the Government, through whoever is in charge of the government at any particular time, could just enter your house and rummage around all of your personal things just to harass you without having any legitimate reason whatsoever to do that. Or, to put it in the most extreme terms, without the Fourth Amendment, the Governor of New Hampshire could raid your house just to steal your best pair of shoes, or your necessary medicine, or your food.

Without the Fourth Amendment, applied fairly and correctly by the courts, based on true evidence, the government could do just about anything to you in your own home without regard to your own personal, private preferences. Without the Fourth Amendment, our Government could victimize us.

Another example of the importance of the Rule of Law in this day and age is the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. The Due Process Clause requires that no person can be deprived of liberty without first receiving due process of law. "Due Process" means fundamental and procedural fairness. The Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause means that our Government is not allowed to lie in court in a criminal prosecution. It means that every person charged with a crime is entitled to fair treatment in a court of law. It means that in America we do not allow prosecutions to be based on the whims of those in power.

Because of the Fourteenth Amendment, criminal trials must be conducted fairly and our Government’s prosecutors must be honest. If we didn’t have the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, the Government could just pretend to be giving you a fair trial and could instead just throw you in prison to punish you for criticizing the leaders of the Government. That is the type of thing that happens in Vladimir Putin's Russia.

Without the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, our Government could literally do whatever the leaders of our Government wanted to do, including killing innocent citizens. That is what happened in Nazi Germany of the 1930s and 1940s under Adolph Hitler, who killed millions of innocent people just to demonstrate his own power.

Without the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, our government could imprison you or kill you, just because some government leader did not like something you posted on Twitter.

So, as I have said here, the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures, and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, are pretty important.

So these are just two examples of why we need to keep the Rule of Law in the United States.