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Somewhere along the way as I was growing up, I heard the phrase “no one is above the law.” I can’t tell you who I heard say it – maybe I read it – but it stuck with me. Years later in university political science and American government classes, I heard it again. I’ve always been obsessed with that concept – because equality before the law is the cornerstone of any true democracy.
From Antiquity to the American Founding
It was during those university years that I learned where the idea came from. It originates in the 4th Century BCE. Aristotle argued in a Treatise on Government, that “it is more proper that law should govern than any one of the citizens.” By 1215, the Magna Carta forced the English monarchy to admit that even the King was bound by the law of the land.
In America, that principle became the bedrock of our political DNA. On the eve of the Revolution, Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense: “For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.” John Adams echoed the sentiment when drafting the Massachusetts Constitution, calling for “a government of laws and not of men.” And in 1882, the U.S. Supreme Court formally nailed it down in United States v. Lee: “No man in this country is so high that he is above the law. No officer of the law may set that law at defiance with impunity.”
That’s the ideal. But today, the man who calls himself our president has made a mockery of it.
How Executive Overreach Undermines Equal Application of the Law
Look at what happened this past May. The Department of Justice cut an out-of-court deal with Donald Trump, his family, and the Trump Organization to settle a civil lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service. Tucked into that agreement was a DOJ order directing the IRS to completely freeze all ongoing and future tax audits and inquiries into the Trump family and their businesses for all tax years prior to May 19, 2026.
Think about that for a second. Ordinary citizens don’t get to opt out of routine audits, ignore discrepancies, or draft custom legal agreements halting federal inquiries into our tax returns. But by turning the executive branch into a personal shield, Trump created a private tax exemption that no small business owner or working taxpayer could ever dream of getting.
Federal law, specifically 26 U.S.C. §7217, explicitly prohibits executive branch officials from interfering in or requesting the termination of IRS audits into specific taxpayers. Trump attempted to use the executive apparatus to secure a private tax exemption inaccessible to any other American. While Federal District Judge Kathleen Williams ultimately voided the agreement, calling out the collusive effort between executive agencies, the attempt itself laid bare a willingness to treat equality before the law as voluntary.
When Trump used the state’s own machinery to carve out a tax exemption for his personal empire, the law wasn’t a universal rule anymore, it became a system of elite privilege. It turned a basic duty the rest of us pay every single year into a special favor reserved for Trump.
In United States v. Lee, the Supreme Court warned that if government officials can ignore the law with impunity, “the power of the government is set at open defiance.” Letting Trump cut a deal to dodge routine tax enforcement doesn’t just push the boundaries of our legal system. It shreds it.
The rest of us don’t get to negotiate our way out of an audit. We shouldn’t be letting Trump get away with it either. A republic can’t survive when equality before the law favors the powerful, while the rest of us are left holding the tab.
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