I just got back from Washington DC, where I presented at a conference on Title VI of the Higher Education Act. The keynote was delivered by Madeleine Albright, who blew me away with her self-effacing humor, but underwhelmed me through her devotion to a single party.
No trip to DC is complete without a stroll through one or more of the Smithsonian museums. I bought Brooke another Monet magnet, and bought the boys a wall-sized reproduction of all four pages of the U.S. Constitution. They’ve been watching our Schoolhouse Rock DVD and singing the preamble song.
But something caught my eye in this document.
The fourth line in Article I, Section 9, reads
No Bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
A bill of attainder is a method by which congress would circumvent the judiciary by passing a law to punish an individual or group for a supposed wrongdoing. In other words, if you or I do something wrong, our guilt should first be established through the courts, and a judge should then determine the appropriate punishment (in the form of a sentence). Congress cannot go around the courts by passing a law that says, “Joe Schmoe must serve 60 days in prison.”
Ex post facto is Latin for “after the fact.” If you or I do something congress thinks is wrong, but for which there is no law, they can’t pass a law and apply it retroactively to our actions.
Now, think about the AIG bonus situation. Whether AIG employees deserve a bonus is irrelevant. Whether AIG is contractually obligated to dole out these bonuses is also irrelevant. The firm offering the money and the employees accepting the payout may be morally unjustified, but this isn’t a question of right or wrong; it is a matter of legality.
The AIG bailout bill did not stipulate how AIG could use the money. In fact, Senator Chris Dodd inserted language into the monstrous stimulus bill protecting such bonuses. Congress has no legal standing to forbid such bonuses, and passing a law forcing those who received the bonuses to forfeit their “earnings” through outrageous new tax code violates the Constitution our representatives swore to “support and defend.”
Some say that congress should initiate a RICO investigation. That would be appropriate because the executive branch would carry out the investigation and the judiciary branch would rule whether any offense occurred. (Eg. Checks and balances. I know, high school civics was a long time ago, huh?) But that’s not what they’re doing here.
What’s happening in this case should scare every single American citizen. No person or property is safe once the legislature is allowed to ignore the Constitution. One day the bill of attainder will be aimed at a group to which you belong. One day you will have accepted some government benefit only to be told, “I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.”
