Day: February 23, 2025

When President Trump and Elon Musk do something, the immediate response is usually to ask, “is that legal?” While I am not a lawyer, as a philosopher I say that law is made up and depends entirely on the willingness to comply or enforce.

Law is made up in that people create the laws. But there are those who argue that law is not (entirely) made up but has a real foundation, such as ethics or religion. For example, there are natural law and rights theorists, such as John Locke, who argue for an objective moral foundation for the law. Religious thinkers, such as Thomas Aquinas, argue that while human laws are made by humans, they derive all their validity from God’s law.

Even if we consider that one of these theories might be correct, there are two basic problems. The first is determining which, if any, theory is correct. From a practical standpoint, people usually believe their interpretation of their morality or religion is correct. But since everyone cannot be right, belief does not settle the matter. The practical problem is that we do not know which, if any, is correct.

The second problem is that even if the correct interpretation of the correct theory is found, there is still the problem of translating that theory into human laws and this means that people will still need to create the laws. Thanks to ambiguity, vagueness and other complexities of language and meaning, each person will have their own interpretation of these laws. As an example, people have very different concepts of what is reasonable.

A person following the law will have their own interpretation, which can be significantly different from that of a person enforcing the law. If conflict arises, this can involve the courts and thus the interpretations of the judges, lawyers and jury members can all become involved. This all assumes that everyone is acting in good faith, but this is often not the case. So, in addition to what people think the law means, there is also what they want the law to mean in a specific situation. Thus, not only is the initial law made up, but each interpretation is also made up. And a person’s interpretation will vary over time and from situation to situation based on both conscious and unconscious factors such as bias, financial interest or even being hungry. Even if an interpretation is made, its efficacy depends entirely on the willingness of people to comply or enforce it. So, asking whether something is legal is asking for an interpretation of the law, which leads to the question of whose interpretation matters.

Unlike what some call the “laws of nature”, such as the law of gravity, people can decide whether to follow an interpretation of human law. An everyday example is the speed limit. Unlike the speed of light, the legal speed limit depends on people willingly not exceeding it. More serious examples include laws about murder, firing federal employees, and obeying the president of the United States. Obviously enough, a person can always refuse to obey and thus the law is nothing without the willingness of people to comply with an interpretation of a law. As such, a simple “no” negates all the power of the law.

As an obvious objection, you are probably thinking about the fact that the police can kill people, that the President can command people to hurt other people, and that judges can make rulings. But this also depends on the willingness of people to obey an interpretation of the law. As an example, an officer can decide not to give you a ticket or not shoot you. If no one listened to the President, he would need to try to, one assumes, get a gun and threaten people like a lone criminal. A judge’s ruling only works if other people are willing to act on that ruling. As such, a simple “no” negates all the power of the law. While an officer, a judge, or all the Presidents men could hurt you, they cannot make you say “yes” unless you are willing to do so. And they will not hurt you unless they are willing to say “yes” to somebody’s interpretation of the law.

Interestingly, when Trump and Musk do “illegal” things, they are relying on the willingness of other people to comply based on “legal” authority. This seems to be a bit of a paradox in that Trump and Musk are relying on their “legal” authority or “right” to do “illegal” things. They do have a great advantage, since the process seems to be that they can do whatever they want and then a judge might be asked to decide if the “illegal” action was illegal. It is somewhat like being able to demand that a bank give you money and they must give it to you, with the only recourse is that they could ask a judge to ask you to give back the money.

Getting back to the question of whether something is legal, the answer is that it depends on the interpretation of the person who other people are willing to obey. From a practical standpoint, the legal system works initially on people agreeing to go along with it and if this fails, it becomes a matter of the willingness of some people to hurt others until they either agree or are killed. So, anything Trump and Musk does is “legal” until they agree to stop or someone stops them.

As with any research, opposition research relies on sources. If the goal is to gather true and relevant information, then the credibility of sources matters. There are the usual logical standards for assessing the credibility of sources. In such cases, the argument from authority provides a good guide. After all, to accept a claim from a source as true because of the source is to engage in the argument from authority.  This argument has the following form:

 

Premise 1: A makes claim C about Subject S.

Premise 2: A is an authority on subject S.

Conclusion: C is true.

 

The argument can also be recast as an argument from credibility, if one prefers that to authority.

 

Premise 1: A makes claim C about Subject S.

Premise 2: A is a credible source on subject S.

Conclusion: C is true.

 

Assessing this reasoning involves assessing the credibility of the source. One factor is bias: the more biased the source, the less credible. Other factors include  having the expertise to make claims on the subject, whether the source is identified or not (anonymous sources cannot be properly assessed for credibility), and whether credible sources also agree that the claim is true. It must be noted that a lack of credibility does not prove a claim is false. Rather, a lack of credibility means that there is no reason to accept the claim based on that source. Because people tend to weigh bias very heavily, it is important to remember that biased sources can still make true claims. Proving bias lowers credibility but does not disprove the claim.

If the goal of opposition research is to get true and relevant information, then only credible sources should be used. While there is the question of how credible a source should be, a minimal standard should be that the source is more likely to be truthful than they are to lie. And, to follow the advice of John Locke, the evidence must be proportional to the strength of the claim. So, for example, the claim that a candidate’s father was involved in the Kennedy assassination would require considerable support. If the goal is simply to win by any means necessary, then moral concerns are irrelevant. What would matter would be pragmatic concerns about the effectiveness of the information. If the credibility of the source matters to the public (which, as Trump has shown, is often not the case), then credible sources should be used. If the target audience does not care about credulity, then it would not matter, and opposition “researchers” could save time by just making things up. One could also advance the usual sort of utilitarian argument that the end of defeating a bad opponent would justify the means, though this would also require considering the harm caused by setting aside concerns about credibility.

In addition to the credibility concerns about sources, there are also moral concerns, especially about which sources are ethical to use. As was the case with methods, the use of publicly accessible sources usually raises no special moral problems. After all, such information is already available, and the opposition research merely collects it so it can be used against the opposition. As with the ethics of methods, the law can provide a useful starting point for ethical considerations about sources. It can also be argued that the use of illegal sources would be unfair to the opposition if they are staying within the law.  Naturally, it should be kept in mind that the law is distinct from morality, so that the legal is not always ethical and the illegal is not always unethical.

One example that helped bring opposition research into the public eye was the Russian efforts to get information to the Trump campaign in 2016. While Trump claims that they had nothing of value, it is illegal for a candidate to receive anything of value from a foreign source.  In addition to the illegality of accepting foreign assistance in a political campaign, there is also the moral argument that outsiders should not be allowed to interfere in our elections, even if they have true and relevant information. After all, the election is the business of the citizens and foreign involvement subverts democracy. But this could be countered by arguing that any true and relevant information should be available to the voters, no matter its origin.

As another example, someone who violates a non-disclosure agreement to provide information would also be an illegal source. From a moral standpoint, the person who signed the NDA would break their agreement and thus act unethically. Naturally, if the NDA was imposed unjustly then breaking it could be morally acceptable. However, using sources that have freely agreed to remain silent would seem to be wrong. But there is the obvious problem that NDAs can be used to hide awful things that would change the minds of voters and hence they have the right to know.

As was the case with methods, one could advance the argument that winning is all that matters, or a utilitarian argument could be used to justify using morally dubious sources. For example, a utilitarian argument could be made for getting a source to break an NDA that forbids them from talking about the settlement they got from being sexually harassed by a senator. After all, this information would be relevant to deciding whether to vote for the senator.

More broadly, it could be argued that the source should not matter if the information is true and relevant. After all, the right of citizens to know true and relevant information could be taken to override ethical concerns about sources. This is something that likely requires assessment on a case-by-case basis. To illustrate, consider the question of whether political campaigns should accept true and relevant information from foreign powers. On the one hand, there is the argument that the information could help prevent harm by reducing the chance that a bad person would be elected or appointed. However, accepting such aid from foreign powers is to invite the subversion of the election process and could create more harm than what is intended. As such, foreign sources of this type would be unethical to use. In the next and final essay, I will consider the ethics of the content of opposition research, which focuses on the matter of relevance.