'The Law Is The Law' Is The Most Hilariously Misguided Thing Mike Bloomberg's Said Yet

This isn't a profound statement, it's just dumb.

437px-Michael_R_BloombergFormer NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg continues his Quixotic pursuit of national relevance as the “third way” of American politics that no one asked for. It’s hard to blame Mayor Mike for this mistaken read of the world. As long as the New York and D.C. news media fawn all over him from within their bubbles and he can hire consultants willing to tell him he’d win Ohio in the Electoral College, he can’t be blamed for failing to see outside the haze. Billionaires can lead very sheltered lives and it’s very easy to fall into uncritically accepting “yes men and women.”

But when he decided to go on MSNBC yesterday and rail about sanctuary cities — which even Trump’s lawyers know is a fight they can’t win — he crossed the line from a guy getting terrifically bad advice about his political future as America’s savior from shallow, ill-considered partisan discourse, to someone reinforcing the level of facile talking points that put America in its present bind.

To recap, Mayor Bloomberg appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and, in a broader segment discussing the mind-boggling statement of AG Jeff Sessions that New York is “soft on crime” while crime is at historic lows in the city, the discussion zeroed in on “sanctuary cities.” Responding to fellow billionaire Steve Rattner — jeez how many billionaires do you need on one show — Bloomberg said:

“You cannot, Steve, have everybody deciding which laws they should obey,” Bloomberg said. “The law is the law.”

“You should obey the law and if you don’t like the law, get your legislative body to change the law,” Bloomberg continued. “But society breaks down if we can all decide what’s right and what’s wrong.”

That certainly sounds compelling in the very curt, matter-of-fact way that someone from New York City thinks someone from Iowa would appreciate. The problem, of course, is that people in Iowa aren’t universally brain dead no matter what people from the Acela corridor would like to think.

Putting aside the ridiculous assumption that “society breaks down” if New York doesn’t allow the federal government to deputize its police force for free, his attempt at a sound byte gets him next to nowhere. Most people understand that the law is not the law in a practical sense. Going 60 in a 55 mph zone isn’t likely to get you arrested any more than perpetrating a decade-long con game against millions of people isn’t likely to get you in trouble as long as you run a major financial institution. That said, those five miles per hour over the limit might get tacked onto your ticket for driving without a seatbelt. The law is a bundle of incentives and disincentives designed to coerce citizen behavior with the ever present risk of state violence. Put another way… most laws aren’t there to be enforced literally.

There are corners of the federal code that no one’s looked at in years. Or if they have, they’ve only done so to bully some poor schlub into a plea deal. Prosecutorial and law enforcement discretion can give rise to instances of abuse — the aforementioned bullying can be truly troubling — but the American legal system has relied upon discretion for a couple hundred years so far and the “legislative bodies” that Bloomberg talks about are well aware of it.

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That’s where you get peacocking junior legislators proposing harsh new laws to curb whatever crisis they can shove into the media spotlight. They know they’ll never be held accountable for the aftermath of their dumb laws. Ye gods, if “the law is the law,” imagine the mischief that would result.

Which brings us to the rank hypocrisy of Bloomberg’s statement — made for seemingly no purpose but to ingratiate himself with the lowest common denominator of the American electorate. Where was this “the law is the law” talk when he was busy fighting tooth and nail in federal court over his right to “stop and frisk” black people for walking around New York? Back then, Bloomberg virulently rejected that the law — the Fourth Amendment — should get in his way. We don’t even have to get into why he didn’t feel bound to respect that law, as disturbing as that was. But he also contended that a policy that found evidence of a crime a mere 12 percent of the time was justified, even when many of the crimes found weren’t even crimes absent the unjustified search. The stop-and-frisk program Bloomberg was so proud of is the exact opposite of his newfound “the law is the law” mantra. It targeted 86 percent minorities and Mayor Mike was going on the radio flatly explaining that he wished targeted black people more. Quite simply, Bloomberg’s stance at the time was literally “the law is the law for people of color… we don’t really worry about the whites.”

The implementation of that program amounted to an egregious abuse of discretion, but it drives home that even Bloomberg realizes that the law isn’t the law.

Do immigration laws require aggressive round-ups? Are they better handled as leverage in prosecuting wrongdoing for other crimes — à la the ticket for going 60 in a 55 during a seat belt stop? Do otherwise law-abiding undocumented migrants require the massive allocation of law enforcement resources it would take to deport them or is removing even those without criminal records important in maintaining the overall deterrent? These are valid questions to probe, but the public discourse isn’t served when the discussion is dumbed down like this.

How government decides to enforce its laws matters much more than the laws themselves, as Bloomberg proved when he let millions of white potheads freely roam the streets of New York. Someone campaigning to be the voice of reason should probably understand that.

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HeadshotJoe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.