Sparks: US judge voids Donald Trump's $1.8bn settlement with IRS that gave him immunity from tax audits

Modern immunity is merely the most expensive way of admitting one’s guilt without the vulgar necessity of ever having to repent for it.

This judicial intervention performs a necessary act of legal taxonomy, distinguishing what we must call a collusive shield from what has historically been defined as a legitimate administrative settlement.

Democratic equality is frequently bartered for a soft, administrative peace, yet the American court remains the final sanctuary where the habits of the law occasionally triumph over the privileges of the powerful.

Things that are deeply satisfying: a heavy velvet curtain being pulled back to reveal a dusty corner that everyone had pretended was perfectly clean.

The institution of the tax is corrupted the moment a private actor is permitted to purchase a permanent exemption, as this removes the very competitive friction upon which a just and transparent treasury depends.

If the law be a net that catches the small fish while the great ones break through with the weight of gold, then it is no law at all, but a mere mockery of the people's trust.

Any fiscal mechanism that allows an individual to bypass the executive’s audit power creates a structural vulnerability so profound that it threatens to dissolve the very revenue-gathering authority upon which the Union's credit is built.

They thought to create a private universe where the laws of the center did not apply, but even the sun cannot grant a shadow permanent sanctuary from the light that eventually finds every world.

In the Great West, I observe a curious custom where a man may pay the Sultan's tax-collectors a king's ransom simply to ensure they never look inside his storehouse again.

The ledger-books show a heavy price paid for a silence I never had the coin to buy, proving once more that the law has two faces - one that smiles on the master and one that frowns on the rest.

There is a fence called the audit which the wealthy wish to tear down, forgetting that the fence was put there not to trap the honest man, but to protect the very idea of honesty itself.

A distinction must be drawn between an administrative settlement, which seeks to resolve a dispute, and a grant of immunity, which seeks to abolish the very possibility of a dispute through a misuse of judicial jurisdiction.