You can't divorce the law that's on the books from the organs that enforce it. Any legal theorist will tell you that. Any lawyer will tell you that, and if you were ever involved in serious litigation you know.
Apologies if that’s how it came off, but that wasn’t what I was trying to say. Of course, in the moment the law is enforced, the enforcer “is the law.” That is true for any law, at any time, but it is not literally true. Enforcing a law unfairly can be (and often is) prosecuted as a crime, and gets either new laws passed or existing laws changed.
But that they can be sued in a court of law is actually a very big deal; it is the defining thing that makes them not the law.
A reminder of what I was responding to: “They issue the claim, the judgement and the penalty. And there is nothing you can do about it. Why? Because they are the law.”
That is plainly untrue. There is something you can do about it. You can sue them, precisely because they are not the law.
You can't divorce the law that's on the books from the organs that enforce it. Any legal theorist will tell you that. Any lawyer will tell you that, and if you were ever involved in serious litigation you know.
Apologies if that’s how it came off, but that wasn’t what I was trying to say. Of course, in the moment the law is enforced, the enforcer “is the law.” That is true for any law, at any time, but it is not literally true. Enforcing a law unfairly can be (and often is) prosecuted as a crime, and gets either new laws passed or existing laws changed.
But that they can be sued in a court of law is actually a very big deal; it is the defining thing that makes them not the law.
A reminder of what I was responding to: “They issue the claim, the judgement and the penalty. And there is nothing you can do about it. Why? Because they are the law.”
That is plainly untrue. There is something you can do about it. You can sue them, precisely because they are not the law.