hold power

“In his judgments, he would lay down the law brilliantly which could be used as a precedent for future cases. But whenever the state was heavily invested in any issue, he failed to hold power to account, so the state got away with what they had set out of achieve.”

Nor does the federal government hold power over offshore oil platforms within three miles of shore — those areas fall under state jurisdiction.

Take the value of public protest; the right to vote; the ability of the free press to hold power to account; and the rule of law.

While all of that is true, it’s increasingly apparent that the same charge can be leveled against journalism as well: that this elaborate system of fact-processing tools that was constructed to‍—how did we quaintly put it, “hold power to account”?—suffers from virtually all the same failings as does the law.

Ultimately, Trump's efforts to seize and hold power “will fail,” de Mesquita told me, for the same reason that public pressure during the 1960s ended the Jim Crow laws and ended legal segregation.