Dale Oesterle makes a great point about the recent decision in which a federal judge "all but declared unconstitutional ... parts of the Thompson memo."
The Thompson memo is a Justice Department document of guidelines on whether to indict a firm and well as its misbehaving executives. The documents recommends that prosecutors take a corporation's willingness to pay legal fees of its indicted employees as evidence of lack of cooperation for an indictment of the company itself. The judge found that this pressure on the firm is unconstitutional, a violation of an executive's the right to a fair trail and the right to an attorney. I have written elsewhere criticizing the Thompson memo and think it is bad policy. But unconstitutional?? We are fast developing a culture of protection based on a constitution that is "unfair." My lay person friends believe that anything unfair is unconstitutional. The document is some granddaddy protection against all that is unfair. Opinion like this contribute to the fallacy.