In Joseph Heller’s novel, Catch-22, Capt. John Yossarian, a World War II airman stationed near Rome, gets frustrated over the practice of the military police who cite a rule called Catch-22 whenever they want to arrest someone. “Did they show it to you?” he shouts at an elderly Italian woman who witnessed the police take away his friends. “Did you even make them read it?”
The woman tells Yossarian that the law says the police don’t have to show anyone a copy of Catch-22.
“What law is that?” he asks.
“Catch-22,” she says.
This kind of circularity is not a joke but a commonplace in tyrannies, where the law is a justification unto itself. In free societies, healthy law depends on citizens challenging such fiat justifications whenever they crop up. A lawsuit filed by our civil liberties organization, the Project for Privacy and Surveillance Accountability,…
