Power, Money & Justice

The most powerful political and financial elites are virtually immunized from the rule of law, empowered to violate those laws with full-scale impunity and to act without any constraints, while the politically powerless are imprisoned with far greater ease and in far greater numbers than any other country on the planet. Even the most egregious elite transgressions -- the pilfering and plundering that led to the 2008 financial crisis; the illegal surveillance, war and torture regime of the last decade; corporate crimes in virtually every realm -- are shielded from accountability with demands for immunity and leniency, while ordinary Americans have the full weight of the criminal justice system mercilessly crashing down upon them for even petty offenses which are rarely punished in most of the civilized world. The book examines the implications for this development (what happens when two different sets of rules apply for the powerful and the powerless?), documents why the current system is fundamentally different than even the serious, well-known violations of "equality under the law" which have plagued American history, and describes how "law" and the justice system are used to entrench and bolster inequality rather than subvert it.

Glenn Greenwald