Law professor Ethan Burger has an interesting article on political interference in Russia’s judicial processes in Legal Times. In light of the ongoing pillaging of more and more companies and seizures of private property all while the state goes to war, the earlier reactions by Western governments to Russia’s legal free fall seem tepid, naive, and ill-advised. Excerpt below.

Western political leaders have been reluctant to take decisive steps, preferring to pursue “quiet diplomacy.” They have tended to treat the tax evasion and fraud charges brought against Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2004 as the exception — the rare case driven by politics and personality — and not the rule. Khodorkovsky was the head of the privately-owned Yukos Oil Co. At the time of its de facto seizure by the state, the company was producing about 20 percent of Russia’s oil.