Indicting Leaders Is Widespread for Functioning Democracies

As information unfold that former President Donald Trump had been indicted by a Manhattan grand jury, making him the primary former U.S. President to be charged with against the law, his spokesperson, Liz Harrington likened the scenario to a “banana republic.” His son, Donald Trump Jr., declared the case “Communist-level sh*t. That is stuff that will make Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot blush.” The previous President is predicted to be arraigned on Tuesday.

However a authorities that’s accountable to the rule of regulation, and never topic to the whims of a king or a dictator, is taken into account one of many key tenets of democracy—and, many specialists say, it’s important for leaders to be held accountable like anybody else. In reality, many international locations which can be thought of free and extremely useful democracies have prosecuted their leaders.

“Indicting Trump thus is crucial to ship a message to all: Nobody, not even a former president, is above the regulation,” stated Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of College of California Berkeley Faculty of Regulation, in an interview with Berkeley News.

Take, for example, France. Ex-president Nicholas Sarkozy was convicted in 2014 of getting tried to bribe a choose by suggesting he’d commerce a job for details about a case. In 2021, he was sentenced to a few years in jail (two of them are suspended), though he’s appealing the case. Earlier than him, former President Jacques Chirac was discovered guilty of corruption, and in 2011 was handed a two-year suspended jail sentence.

Learn Extra: Holding World Leaders Like Trump Accountable Is Democratic

In South Korea, two of its most up-to-date presidents, Presidents Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-bak, served time in jail for bribery, though each had been later pardoned.

And in some circumstances, the democratic course of isn’t even interrupted. In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu became prime minister again regardless of an ongoing felony corruption case, wherein he faces costs of bribery, fraud and breach of belief.

Notably, not all circumstances have led to convictions. In Italy, for instance, former Premier Silvio Berlusconi was acquitted in a sequence of trials for numerous costs, together with for having paid for intercourse with an underage woman and paying witnesses.

The record goes on: in Taiwan, Germany, Portugal, and across the globe, former leaders have confronted indictments, usually for corruption-related costs. As Robert Maguire Analysis Director at Residents for Accountability and Ethics wrote in a recent editorial for TIME among the international locations which have prosecuted their leaders even have democracies that charge increased on a scale of political rights and civil freedoms than the US. “Democracies younger and outdated have held previous presidents and prime ministers accountable—and are available out as sturdy (or stronger) on the opposite facet,” he stated.

Some specialists have additionally identified that history has shown the choice—avoiding the prosecution of a pacesetter who has dedicated against the law—isn’t the higher possibility for democracies. As Matthew Dallek, a professor at George Washington College’s Faculty of Skilled Research, stated in a current Washington Submit editorial, corruption in Mexico flourished after Mexico did not prosecute officers for corruption during the 20th century.

Contact us at letters@time.com.