This is the Cato Daily podcast for Thursday, February 23rd, 2022.

I'm Caleb Brown.

We've done away with slavery with the 13th Amendment, but when a prosecutor engages in a targeted and otherwise unwarranted

prosecution of people for quitting an abusive job and then charges their lawyer for, you know,

giving them advice, surely that prosecutor can be held to account, if not

criminally at least civilly. Ben Field is an attorney at the Institute for Justice, he describes

a stunning example of the absolute immunity

currently enjoyed by prosecutors. Careful listeners of the Kater Daily

podcast will be familiar with qualified immunity which is a doctrine that was invented by the US Supreme Court out of whole cloth to quote my colleague Clark Neely that protects public officials essentially from any civil liability for violating the rights of individuals.

So what do prosecutors have?

They have something called absolute immunity.

That sounds less qualified than qualified immunity.

Indeed. In fact, that's the whole... less qualified than qualified immunity.

In fact, that's the whole point that even if they are,

even if when they charge someone,

they are blatantly violating the Constitution.

And even if they have the most bad faith motives

to go after someone for political reasons

or for economic reasons or for any other,

they are absolutely immune for any actions they take in their prosecutorial role.

That seems wrong-headed.

It would seem that a politically targeted prosecution, the kinds of harassment that prosecutions can end up being,

...