The US supreme court just basically legalized bribery | Moira Donegan

By sheer coincidence, this ruling concerns the sort of generous gifts' and gratuities' that justices have been known to accept

Did you know you could give your local government officials tips when they do things you like? Brett Kavanaugh thinks you can. In fact, if you're rich enough, says the US supreme court, you can now pay off state and local officials for government acts that fit your policy preferences or advance your interests. You can give them lavish gifts, send them on vacations, or simply cut them checks. You can do all of this so long as the cash, gifts or other gratuities" are provided after the service, and not before it - and so long as a plausible deniability of the meaning and intent of these gratuities" is maintained.

That was the ruling authored by Kavanaugh in Snyder v United States, a 6-3 opinion issued on Wednesday, in which the supreme court dealt the latest blow to federal anti-corruption law. In the case, which was divided along ideological lines, the court held that gratuities" - that is, post-facto gifts and payments - are not technically bribes", and therefore not illegal. Bribes are only issued before the desired official act, you see, and their meaning is explicit; a more vague, less vulgarly transactional culture of gratitude" for official acts, expressed in gifts and payments of great value, is supposed to be something very different. The court has thereby continued its long effort to legalize official corruption, using the flimsiest of pretexts to rob federal anti-corruption statutes of all meaning.