I. The question is whether a public prosecutor may be removed at the ruler's nod, as though he were a part of the ruler's own power. The judge writes that Congress, which gave the Attorney General the right of removal, also set the limits of that right, limits which even the defendants admit were broken. My ruling is this: power given by law is bounded by law. He who enjoys the benefit of a law does not escape its measure; and I hold that the law of each community is to be followed, not my own will. A Princeps who may dismiss his officials, so long as he keeps the law, is a magistrate; one who does it without law is a master.

II. The question, as the Guardian reports, is whether a post should be lost because of a father's name. This is her assertion and not yet proved; no reason for the dismissal is given in any record. Her father, the New York Post reports, awaits trial in North Carolina, charged with threatening to kill the president, a charge he says was brought out of vengeance. But a father's charge, true or false, is not his daughter's. Sulla barred the children of the proscribed from office; that precedent is remembered with loathing, not praise. Let us remember that reverence for my name is not to be won by fear and terror, nor by charges of treason.

III. The last question is who pays. If the ruling stands, public money will be paid out for months in which the prosecutor was not allowed to work. This cost is not the judge's fault but the fault of whoever disregarded the law. Who ordered the dismissal the records do not say; that should be the first inquiry, just as I once asked through whose fault the people of Nicomedia had wasted their money on aqueducts begun and abandoned. Prosecutors are guardians of the laws, not clients of a faction; whoever treats them as household slaves turns public justice into private business, and lays his own penalty on the treasury.