“This reaffirms the American principle that no one is above the law,” Biden said after former President Donald J. Trump was convicted last month of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal.
“No one is above the law in this country,” David Weiss, the special prosecutor who prosecuted Hunter Biden on firearms charges, said after Biden was convicted this week. “Everyone must be held accountable for their actions.”
So, we get it: No one is above the law, not even the president’s son or a former president. The phrase has been used by many politicians in recent weeks, including Vice President Kamala Harris (“Donald Trump thinks he’s above the law,” she said at a recent campaign rally). The phrase “above the law” has appeared 100 times in The New York Times this year alone.
The exact origins of the phrase are unclear, but several people are credited with popularizing it.
But as popular as the expression is, it has been a fundamental principle of democracy for hundreds of years, with cameos from King John of England, Teddy Roosevelt, Richard Nixon and a mysterious figure known only as Z.
It’s a basic principle, but there are some nuances.
“No one is above the law” seems surprisingly straightforward for a lawyer to use, but it’s not as simple as saying “everyone is treated equally.”
In a monarchy, for example, “the king is likely to enjoy certain privileges that cannot be claimed by other citizens of the country,” Columbia Law School professor Thomas W. Merrill wrote in his essay “The Essential Meaning of the Rule of Law” (2022). “But as long as the king enjoys only those privileges granted to him by established law, he will not violate the rule of law.”
Concepts derived from Magna Carta
Magna Carta is a key document that established the principle of the rule of law in England. Written in Latin and published in 1215, even translations of the document do not accurately state that “no man is above the law.” However, the document curbed King John’s power and made it clear that his power was not unlimited. The English Parliament, which owes its existence in part to the document, calls it “the first document to codify the principle that the king and his government are not above the law.”
The phrase “above the law” first appears in The Times archives in 1860, just a few years after the paper was founded in 1851.
“Strange as it may seem, in a government whose foundational principle is that ‘no man is above the law,’ it is nevertheless true that we have a Secretary of War who is virtually above the laws he administers,” reads a lengthy letter to the editor blasting Secretary of War John B. Floyd.
(The letter was anonymous, not uncommon for the time; mysteriously, it was signed simply with the letter “Z.”)
Teddy Roosevelt’s Message to Congress
British constitutional scholar AV Dicey is known for popularizing the broader concept of the rule of law, the idea that all people are responsible to the same laws. In 1885, he wrote that “every man, whatever his status or situation, is subject to the ordinary laws of the country, and to the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts.”
President Theodore Roosevelt is also sometimes said to have popularized the phrase. In his 1903 State of the Union address, he spoke in support of both management and labor, but warned that the federal government would take action if either side or any individual broke the law.
“No one is above the law and no one is below the law,” he said, “nor do we ask for anyone’s permission to demand that the law be obeyed.”
Roosevelt’s rephrasing of “nobody” as “nobody,” as others have done, reflects the realities and everyday sexism of the time: women would not be guaranteed the right to vote for another 17 years.
This phrase was popularized during the Watergate scandal.
The phrase “no one is above the law” really exploded in popularity in the United States in the 1960s and especially in the 1970s, following the revelations of Watergate and other crimes by President Richard Nixon’s administration.
When Nixon asserted executive privilege and argued that the Oval Office tapes should not be made public, the phrase “no man is above the law” became ubiquitous.
“The president of the United States is not above the law,” his lawyers acknowledged in a lengthy court argument. They said he could be tried, “but only after being impeached, convicted and removed from office.”
Most of the opinion pieces and letters to the editor at the time seemed to ponder whether Nixon was “above the law.” In the end, the Supreme Court ruled that Nixon was not above the law and unanimously ruled that he must turn over the tapes.
Nixon was not convinced, telling interviewer David Frost in 1977, “If the president does it, it’s not illegal.”
The phrase also appears to have inspired a film, albeit not a Hollywood classic: The Rule of Law (1988), which was the debut of action hero Steven Seagal. The Times ranked the film among “the top three or four dumbest movies of 1988.”
In the film, Seagal declares to the corrupt CIA agents, “You think yourselves are above the law, but you’re not above me.”
And if Steven Seagal says “No one is above the law,” then surely no one is above the law.
