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Law in Contemporary Society
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A Legal System Bent: Power, Chevron, and the Donziger Story-- By MasonCantrell - 25 May 2025A Modern Fable About Law and PowerTo build a meaningful theory of social action, it is not enough to study the law in a vacuum. One must understand how law interacts with power, wealth, and the institutions that maintain them. To quote Noam Chomsky, “[W]ithin the 'nation' there are sharply conflicting interests, and to understand [law] and its effects we must ask where power lies and how it is exercised.” This essay is not a legal brief. It does not aim to defend or prosecute Steven Donziger. Instead, it tells a fable—a narrative drawn from real events meant to highlight how a legal system designed to serve justice can, under pressure, be weaponized to serve something else entirely. This fable is not a mere simplification, but a framework—a way to examine how legal ideals can fracture under pressure. Lawyers and judges are not inherently corrupt. Many work with integrity and care deeply about justice. But the structure of the legal system often rewards those who can best navigate its complexity—typically those with money, connections, and influence. Reverence for the legal profession must be balanced with a clear-eyed understanding of the system’s vulnerabilities.The Story of Steven DonzigerSteven Donziger, an environmental lawyer, spent decades fighting Chevron (formerly Texaco) over massive oil contamination in the Ecuadorian Amazon. From 1964 to 1992, Texaco’s operations in the Ecuadorian Amazon resulted in the contamination of vast swaths of land, causing severe health problems for indigenous communities. After years of litigation, an Ecuadorian court ruled against Chevron in 2011, demanding nearly $10 billion in damages. Despite this ruling, Chevron refused to comply, moving its assets out of Ecuador to avoid paying. To this day, Chevron has not paid any damages or carried out a meaningful clean-up effort. What followed was a years-long legal counterassault. Shortly after the Ecuador ruling, Chevron enlisted its powerhouse attorneys at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher to bring a retaliatory RICO suit against Donziger, who played a lead role in representing the indigenous communities. The charge included allegations that Donziger ghostwrote court rulings and bribed judges. Chevron’s efforts paid off when Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled against Donziger. Judge Kaplan also initiated a contempt case against Donziger because of his refusal to turn over electronic devices to the court, citing privilege grounds. There were significant conflicts of interest in the case. For one, Judge Kaplan had substantial investments in Chevron at the time of the trial. Even more striking, after the Department of Justice refused to prosecute Donziger in the contempt case, the judge, in an unusual move, appointed a private attorney to prosecute Donziger. The special prosecutor had deep professional and personal ties to both Gibson Dunn and Chevron. Additionally, rather than using the standard random assignment process to select a judge to preside over Donziger’s contempt trial, the judge hand-picked a senior judge who served on the advisory board of the Federalist Society and had ties to Chevron. Unsurprisingly, the court ruled against Donziger in his contempt trial. As a result of Chevron’s legal assault, Donziger served 45 days in jail, nearly 1,000 days of house arrest (four times longer than the maximum allowed for criminal contempt), spent time in a halfway house, and was disbarred. After his appeal in the Second Circuit was denied, the Supreme Court denied certiorari, with Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh dissenting, citing due process concerns and the unusual prosecutorial role of the private attorney. Notably, The Nation released a 2022 report revealing that Chevron, Gibson Dunn, and the special prosecutor collaborated in conducting the criminal contempt case, with at least 32 documented meetings and numerous phone calls held between the parties. None of this is to say Donziger was perfect. His tactics were aggressive, unorthodox, and arguably crossed the ethical line. But that is exactly what makes his story so revealing. In a system supposedly built on fairness, Chevron faced no real accountability, while Donziger was methodically dismantled. Whether or not one agrees with every choice he made, the imbalance of consequences is hard to ignore.The Fable's LessonThis case does not prove that all legal institutions are corrupt. But it does challenge us to ask: Who does the law really serve when tested by power? The Donziger saga reflects the broader truth that legal systems, however noble in design, are susceptible to manipulation by those with the resources to stretch, twist, and reshape them. The real danger is not that Donziger lost. It is that the rules seemed different for each side. When the wealthy can commission justice on demand and the law can be bent into a cudgel, trust erodes. To take social action seriously, we must stop pretending that law always equals justice. We must study its structure, name its blind spots, and be brave enough to imagine how it can work differently. If Donziger’s case is a fable, then its moral is not simply that the bad guys win; rather, it is that the story we tell ourselves about fairness in law needs urgent revision. Law students are often taught to revere the law before they are taught to question it. But questioning is not disloyalty. It is the beginning of responsibility. In the end, maybe the law is like any language. It can speak truth or propaganda, offer clarity or confusion. It depends on who is speaking, and who gets to listen. The goal, then, is not to abandon the law, but to reclaim its voice.You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines:
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