Wealth in a market economy brings certain benefits that are accepted by the general populace as reasonable if not, perhaps, totally "fair:" wealthy people buy more expensive (and safer) cars, they have fancier (and healthier) diets, they stay in nicer (and cleaner) hotels, they purchase more expensive (and better) medical care, and they live in more attractive (and more secure) neighborhoods. And if legal troubles should arise, they hire more expensive (and more successful) legal defense. Life can be better if you have money.

But most people interpret "rule of law" to mean that there are certain areas where, to the extent possible, everyone is the same, irrespective of wealth; accountability before the law is one of these areas. While a wealthy person's ability to argue his or her case may be enhanced by access to better legal representation, accountability should ultimately be the same. And if a law has been broken, justice requires the same consequences for everyone.

Fifteen jails in California have instituted a plan that introduces an explicit "market place for punishment" in which buyers with money can chose their punishment. In an effort to address prison over-crowding, these jails have instituted a "pay-to-stay" program in which prisoners can opt to buy out of staying at the county jail and move to a privately-run jail. Using hotel-style verbiage, the private jails' "benefits include assignment to a private cell with a regular door, separation from violent offenders, access to the jail’s movie collection, and the ability to carry an iPod or cell phone."

This symposium considers the implications of pay-to-stay programs. Arguments include discussion of competing objectives such as the need for entrepreneurship and innovation in the business of punishment, the fear that this plan will only mask the need to make all prisons tolerable by letting some people buy their way out of the squalor, the lack of "virtue" this plan introduces in society's enforcement of ethics, and the consequences of institutionalizing the reality that money makes a difference in punishment just like it does in every other market.

This may make plea deals even more successful: go to trial or get three years, upstairs room with a view, wi-fi and cable. This adds the marketplace as a third to the tension already in the dyad of law and king discussed in "lex rex."