Judge Andrew Napolitano generated a few chuckles last month, when he started talking to the John Locke Foundation’s 22nd anniversary dinner audience about libido dominandi.

No, he wasn’t making a Viagra joke. He was discussing a concept spelled out further in his most recent book, It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong.

Why then does the government insist upon sovereign immunity? The answer lies in what St. Augustine referred to as libido dominandi, the lust to dominate, or in other words, a desire to exert control over others. …

… So, too, our politicians though they may claim to have our best interests at heart, are corrupted by this human desire for power. Moreover, a position of power only facilitates libido dominandi, because one can so easily forget that he is supposed to be the servant of the people and not their master. An excellent example of this corruptive nature of power is the Alien and Sedition Acts; although our Founders enshrined a right of free speech, those same men later enacted an outrageous law punishing those who criticized the government, a direct contravention of that right. Thus, even the men who promised future generations liberty in perpetuity were not immune from libido dominandi.

Not being held accountable to the law — in the form of immunity from a lawsuit — is extraordinary power. After all, the law not only endeavors to restrict individuals from taking actions which are harmful to others, but seeks justice; the promise that those who do in fact break the law and harm others will have to suffer the consequences, or in other words, that wrongs will be made right. When one escapes justice, he becomes free to trample on the natural rights of whomever he pleases. Thus, there can be no better example of libido dominandi than the government’s evisceration of the judicial petition, in direct contempt of God — the Natural Law. When the government escapes justice, not only are innocents harmed, but the escape establishes a precedent for future governments to do the same.