ON TREASON

A law professor delivers a fluent, case-rich examination of the laws governing treason and its punishment.

If you are of a certain political bent, it is indisputable that by colluding with Russia (and, apparently, China too), Donald Trump committed traitorous acts. If you are Trump, meanwhile, you fling the word “treason” about with abandon when, say, Democratic representatives do not stand up to applaud you. Neither party interprets the law correctly, writes Larson, a law professor and leading authority on treason. There are technical determinants, one of which is that one must engage in a formal act of war against one’s own country, which, as it turns out, is “constitutional quicksand.” Trump may clearly take Russia’s interests to be his own against those of the nation over which he ostensibly presides, but Russia and the U.S. are not at war—not officially, anyway. What of Jefferson Davis, who waged war on this country? Quicksand again: A prosecuting attorney would have to establish that secession is constitutionally forbidden and then seat a jury that would find the defendant guilty, no easy matter since the crime took place in Virginia. And Jane Fonda, who broadcast anti-war messages from Hanoi? Now the question emerges: Was the U.S. officially at war? Even though by some precedents a formal declaration was not necessary, the government under Nixon decided not to prosecute—perhaps, Larson ventures, because “a prosecution of Fonda risked exposing Nixon’s own activities with respect to Vietnam, which were hardly honorable.” In the end, writes the author, even though today “many Americans have a powerful desire to define conduct that they find reprehensively disloyal as treason,” the law is seldom applied—just once, in fact, over the course of the nation’s history—and for very good reason. Though bound up in highly technical legal arguments, Larson examines the notion clearly and accessibly.

A book that both clarifies and complicates the laws surrounding treason, which explains why it is so rarely invoked.