The great theme of the Bush administration’s war on terror is that the executive needs to break or ignore or side-step the law at times in order to defeat our deadly enemy. Hence the relaxation of 
strict legal bars on torture; hence the NSA warrant-less wire-tapping, which circumvented the law; hence the several hundred laws that the Bush administration has insisted it does not have to enforce or execute. A reader recently watched the great movie, "A Man For All Seasons," by Robert Bolt about St Thomas More’s resistance to lawless executive power and the fusion of church and state in Henrician England. ("This is not Spain," Cromwell keeps reassuring us, as torture is practised, and property confiscated. Sound familiar?) Back from England, we rented the movie last week again. The great family group portrait of More stands in the National Portrait Gallery in London, and my confirmation saint was on my mind. In the screenplay, Bolt gives us the classic debate about whether it is permissible, as Rumsfeld and Cheney believe, to break the law to pursue and defeat evil. The conversation is between the hot-headed future son-in-law Roper and one of the great lawyers of his time, More. More sticks up for legal procedures in every case. Roper objects.
Roper: So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law!
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you – where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast – man’s laws, not God’s – and if you cut them down – and you’re just the man to do it – d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.
It’s rarely been put better. Alberto Gonzales and John Yoo should be forced to sit through it.
(Portrait of Thomas More, sketch by Hans Holbein.)
The Dish 
