Practicing Legal Nihilism

From the Washington Post editorial page:

Dmitry Medvedev keeps giving speeches about ending the lawlessness and corruption that have overtaken his country. That would be encouraging — except that Russians who try to act on the president’s words keep turning up dead. The latest victim of what Mr. Medvedev calls “legal nihilism” is Sergei Magnitsky, a 37-year-old lawyer and father of two who was reported to have died last week in a Moscow prison, after more than a year of detention without charge. (…)

Mr. Browder was once conspicuous in his loud defense of Mr. Medvedev’s mentor, Vladimir Putin, even after the persecution and imprisonment of the country’s biggest private businessman, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Once authorities turned on Mr. Browder, revoked his visa and drove his business out of the country, Mr. Putin publicly denied that he had ever heard of the famous investor. From London, Mr. Browder has been doing his best to expose Russian corruption and to warn foreign investors; he even produced a YouTube video about “how companies are stolen, criminals take over banks and murderers dictate to judges.” Now he will have to add the death of his own lawyer to that litany.