Those who see Donald Trump’s recent conviction as a vindication of the rule of law are addicts. 

Might as well face it. They’re addicted to law.  

The Trump hush money conviction is likely to make this law addiction even stronger. That’s a problem because, like any addiction, a law addiction satisfies an immediate need at the expense of making your dependency worse down the line.

It’s about the hush money case becoming a false promise that the legal process will save us from Trump’s clutches. 

The hush money celebration is a gateway drug to a dependency on the legal process, like the candy man giving away free drugs to a teenager at a party.   

So, the kid takes the drug and gets high. Ecstasy. Up in the clouds. Awesome. And then the downer. But remember how good it felt.

The rule of law worshipers are on a high about law. “The rule of law won,” a writer in the Daily Beast said about the hush money case.

University of California legal scholars called the verdict and trial “a triumph of the rule of law” because the verdict showed that no one is above the law.

Such slavish praise, such naive optimism. Such a misunderstanding of the way law works.

Justice Or Abuse?

These affirmations say nothing of the millions of people who feel that the Trump trial was a mockery of the rule of law, like that’s just a tiny blip on the screen of constitutional jurisprudence.

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said the case was an “abuse of the rule of law.”

Tucker Carlson said the trial and verdict “does mark the end of the fairest justice system in the world. Anyone who defends this verdict is a danger to you and your family.”

And the Hawaii Republican Party, not known for making emotional statements, or for that matter any public statements, declared that the decision made Trump “a political prisoner,” a term usually reserved for the likes of Stalinist show trials and gulags.

These are fringe people? In your dreams. Dreaming is the only way you can rid yourself of the uncomfortable fact that possibly close to half the public believes that Trump was treated unfairly.

You think these Trump supporters or Trump critics are wrong? So what. The stress on who’s right and who’s wrong is a big time-suck.

It is a very narrow court-focused debate that misses the key issue, which is not the importance of legal doctrine. It’s the fact that each side wraps itself in the rule of law to come to totally different emotionally charged conclusions.

The reactions to the hush money case don’t demonstrate law’s effectiveness nearly as much as they show the power of unofficial talk about law.

The hush money trial is not a harbinger of the legal system’s future success with Trump. It’s a warning not to be optimistic about law’s effectiveness.

Those informal interpretations can be, and often are, more influential than a court’s interpretation. They are in the Trump case.

These interpretations by everyday folks are important not because they are accurate but because they are influential.

It’s a pretty good guess that many of you have been talking about Trump’s legal situation for a long time.

Does it make a difference how accurate you are? Not really. Does it make a difference if, say, you persuaded a reluctant Trump voter to vote for him? You bet.

Regarding the hush money case, if you want to understand what’s going on, you need to focus on what ordinary, non-jurisprudential people are saying. And what they are saying is that the country is polarized and that the results exacerbate these stark differences.

The law is not “The Law.” It’s not a tall, masked man on a white horse riding into Dodge to save the day. 

Law is more like your neighborhood handyperson who can usually but not always fix small things, sometimes does not show up as promised and the only thing they’re able to do about your complicated electrical problem is put in new switches.

Differences over Trump are about wiring while the best that law can do must be within the capacity of a Phillips screwdriver and electrical tape.

From that perspective, the hush money trial is not a harbinger of the legal system’s future success with Trump. It’s a warning not to be optimistic about law’s effectiveness.

The Legal System Meanders

The other legal cases against Trump are taking forever. Good chance that every other Trump trial will not take place until after the presidential election. 

It’s tempting to see the problem in terms of individuals — biased, slow-walking trial judges; biased Supreme Court justices who refuse to recuse themselves; an overly cautious U.S. attorney general; enabling congressional Republicans, gutless congressional Democrats.

You may not like their actions, but they are legal. Due process, which is an integral part of making the rule of law effective, accepts and encourages some of this very behavior.

Is the Florida judge in the classified documents case acting as she is as cover for her bias? Who knows?  It’s not only impossible to know her true motives, whatever they are, it does not matter because she is doing what the law allows and even encourages.

What to you seems like unconscionable delay is, in due process terms, care, deliberation and a key part of a government of laws, not of men.

If Trump does not win, the country is likely to be in the same legal and political pickle it’s in now, with the rule of law acting as a fraught polarizer rather than a foundation.

Other factors like the Supreme Court’s ability to make its own go-real-easy rule about recusal or ethics may seem stupid or unfair, but for now they are the rules and they show no sign of changing.

Law is not a crown jewel. It’s a diamond in the rough along the lines of the way Winston Churchill described democracy — a terribly flawed way to govern but better than anything else.

It’s intermingled with everyday life in uncertain, unpredictable ways. Having law on your side is a project, not an asset.

Whatever happens in the 2024 election, the rule of law will have a very different look. If Trump wins and he becomes as authoritarian as he promises, the rule of law’s foundation, such as it is, will be weakened because one of the first things an authoritarian leader does is to limit the power of the judiciary and in effect to argue that he is above the law.

If Trump does not win, the country is likely to be in the same legal and political pickle it’s in now, with the rule of law acting as a fraught polarizer rather than a foundation.

In “Addicted to Love,” Robert Palmer sings that you might like to think you’re immune, but “it’s closer to the truth that you can’t get enough.”

You know you have to face it. You’re addicted to law. It’s time for an intervention, not more candy.