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Sniffnoy comments on Control Fraud - Less Wrong
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Comments (9)
If the head of government (with the collusion of the head of state) is commiting the fraud, how can it actually be illegal?
...because the law is not just whatever the head of government says it is?
Seems unlikely- you'd expect they'd change the rules to cover their tracks.
Again, that assumes that changing the relevant rules is within the powers their office grants them.
At the very least that would require publicly stating what you're doing. Depending on the government system it might also require the legislature's cooperation.
In this case, we're talking about an invocation of Nixon's rule ("if the President does it, it's not illegal"). In the case of a government, we're not talking about the law not being just what the head of government says it is, but the expectations of the governed. A head of government may to some extent be able to dictate the law as they go along, but at the risk of the governed overthrowing them.
Yeah, obviously my answer assumes that "legal" is an actual well-defined category; but since the original question seemed to as well, and in this case there was an actual simple answer within that framework that didn't require dissolution of the question, I figured it was OK. :)