In Herman Melville’s final novella, Billy Budd, a ship’s captain named Edward Vere orders the hanging of a sailor he knows to be morally innocent. Billy Budd struck a superior officer and killed him, but only because he was falsely accused of mutiny and could not speak in his own defense. Vere is not confused about any of this. He tells the drumhead court exactly what he believes: that Billy is innocent in the eyes of God and nature. Then he argues for the death sentence anyway, on the grounds that the Mutiny Act—the law of the British crown—demands it.

“I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people, and it was not intentional. That’s all I’ll say.”

The US’s non-Israel Middle Eastern allies (i.e., the Gulf dictatorship states) apparently still are not concerned that an all-out US attack would be bad news for the Gulf states.

“Jerome Powell has said that he would serve as ‘chair pro tem’ until his successor is confirmed. So Powell could sue, suggesting that he, not Miran, is chair. It’s quite messy...” 

“The problem that I have here is that we had some U.S. attorney … thinking it would be cute to bring Chair Powell under an investigation just a few months before the position was going to be open.”

Last week, President Donald Trump commemorated income tax payments being due by having DoorDash deliver food from McDonald’s to the White House. The delivery was intended to highlight the first year of tax-free tips. Removing tax on tips was part of the 2025 Big Beautiful Bill (BBB).

In well-ordered legal traditions, disagreement about outcomes is expected. Disagreement about methods is tolerable. But the abandonment of method altogether marks a deeper rupture, one that transforms law from a system of constraint into an instrument of will.

Political controversy has arisen in recent debates on immigration concerning the compatibility between economic liberalism and restrictions on the free movement of labor across national borders.