“Above the Written Law”: Iran-Contra and the Mirage of the Rule of Law

Abstract

Why have scandalous sprees of lawbreaking by U.S. government officials proven so seductive yet so difficult to prosecute? This article takes the Iran-Contra scandal of the Reagan–Bush era as an instructive case study and red flag in the attitudinal erosion of the belief in the rule of law among American conservatives. Before the scandal broke, officials and legal counsels willfully mis-interpreted a clear prohibition to fund counter-revolutionaries and fabricated a post-facto presidential permission in order to sell weapons to Iran without congressional oversight. Congress's assumption that government officials would obey its statutes resulted in neither wrongdoing being punishable by criminal sanctions. Conservatives therefore argued that ends justified neglecting certain laws while also denying they had broken any laws. Prosecutors found themselves compelled to prosecute Iran-Contra's defendants over more prosaic crimes such as lying and stealing rather than more abstract and damaging ones. President George H. W. Bush's pardon of Iran-Contra defendants contributed to an impunity that further eroded the American rule of law to this day.