The Strauss-Kahn Affair Exposes U.S. Legal System

This trial has arrived at a stage of more conjectures and obscurity. Once again, the interests of the public are interspersed with public affairs and political interests are interspersed with state actions. Because of this facts, one could conjecture that this is all a put-up job. Since the statements of the victim were not abundant during the trial, the idea of an operation to put an end to a political career is more than a rumor.

This is very unusual and dramatic. In two days we knew almost everything to destroy a politician of worldwide dimension charged of rape. We did not even know the victim’s name, a chambermaid at a hotel, whose name turned out to be Nafissatou Diallo. Weeks go by, and the case can crumble if we discover more about her. It seems to be extracted from “The Wretched of the Earth,” a book by Frantz Fanon, where the asymmetries in the development are explained, showing how they can lead to the absurdity of this legal case.

There is no possibility of ruling the world as the United States expects by having a legal system whose shortcomings were exposed during the Strauss-Kahn affair. Maybe this is the central issue. The White House is thinking about taking steps so that the New York District Attorney’s office can call for secrecy and accuracy in this legal case whose connotation is international and whose consequences are still unknown.

This trial deals with a wide range of topics: the proper election of positions having the highest global corporate level and the protection of human rights. The impact of this trial encompasses the fight of active feminism and the current situation of law in a country like the United States, which is involved in two wars. Within this context of exception, the country is prone to distort the state’s behavior both domestically and internationally.

The U.S. legal system has been exposed and has placed the discipline of this system at the breaking point. This has happened when it was searching for guilty people who were under the protection of a security doctrine based on the fight against terrorism. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States, as far as the management of public affairs is concerned, began to do justice until it reached untenable bounds for understanding and tolerance. Many situations are being conceived when a new legal culture has emerged in the United States due to the terrorist attacks to the World Trade Center. These situations to exercise local jurisdiction are associated to international law. The United States has opted for a permanent offensive based on the protection of both the domestic and the external threat.

Doubts in the Strauss-Kahn affair do not arise from the charge of rape itself, but from the behavioral record of the victim and the contradictions during her statement, which seriously hurt the credibility of her accusation. The District Attorney’s office has problems related to procedures; in some cases it lacks a firm hand concerning sexual offenses. Some people think that legal action was sped up to rectify a defect in the handling of the case. There is the resignation of Lisa Friel, chief of the Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit, who was removed from her position according to the newspaper Daily News on July 2.

It is reported that both Jeffrey Shapiro, a renowned lawyer devoted to civil law, and Norman Siegel no longer work with the victim. Some information has emerged explaining that the parties could be on the verge of reaching an agreement. A settlement would negatively affect both parties. All of this has left a mark in the political career of Strauss-Kahn, and the victim does not have the power to stop the criminal case, which was entered by the prosecutor.

Some people argue this has brought the lawsuit against Dominique Strauss-Kahn to a standstill, so those who have been directly involved will be the most harmed in the long run. In the event the parties reach an agreement, the sum would not even be zero. On the contrary, they would all lose.

The former head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has seen his political career sacrificed. The accuser has little possibility of obtaining financial reparation. The aspect that was known has already been confirmed: Immigrants’ survival strategies work to the extreme. French socialists played their cards right in regards to the general elections; the New York legal system has revealed the problems of American justice. Other victims are civil servants from the New York District Attorney’s office who have been dismissed or discredited. Even Cyrus Vance Jr., the New York District Attorney, has been questioned. In the event that a definitive stoppage of the case is arranged, the feminist movement could not use the victim as an icon for its fight.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the political rival of Strauss-Kahn, is likely to be the winner. However, this possibility is undermined because of the features of the legal case, where the victim’s circumstances, the lack of statements and the hastened procedures when arresting Strauss-Kahn point to an operation.

It has to be remarked that most burning issues about politics are merged in a tangle of frivolities that surround the important people that have been chosen to lead higher positions. In this very sense, the Strauss-Kahn affair will become in the long run a paradigm because of the following questions: How many things about the political aspect will prevail in the subconscious of people? How much will be overwhelmed by the human appetite for sexual and incidental aspects that invade the subconscious due to the pressure of the central idea of sex, mass media and commerce?

By having that dose of cynicism typical of those who lobby on the other side, it could be said that the former head of the IMF charged of rape by a chambermaid in New York is just another leader of globalization with all the shortcomings and virtues that dominate the world. Maybe. However, if one looks closer at his career, Strauss-Kahn exhibits an ideal which is similar to Gordon Brown’s in Great Britain: A Social Democrat who thinks that we will get nowhere and inequalities will not be reduced with the current free market absolutism criteria that manages the global economic system. This refers to economic stability and governance.

Important people such as Strauss-Kahn, who get access to progressive positions that have a global impact, are really scarce in the battle between transnational money and powers that represent the State institutionalism. A lot of Frenchmen think that we do not have to play with French politics neither in New York nor on the Champs-Élysées. The fact of having defeated Strauss-Kahn during the general elections would have been more tiring and more honorable.