Zohran Mamdani’s disdain for the law is disqualifying — and dangerous

Zohran Mamdani’s many antics — setting to music his love for those who provide material support to Hamas, shutting down major transportation hubs with rush-hour protests, refusing to condemn calls for a globalized intifada and flipping off Christopher Columbus, to name just a few — make it easy to lose sight of the fact that he is applying for a job.

Indeed, Mamdani would prefer we fracture over what “intifada” means than that we evaluate his qualifications to serve as New York City’s mayor.

But precisely because he does not want us to, we should.

The mayor sits within a three-branch system: A legislative branch creates laws, an executive branch implements and enforces laws, and a judicial branch interprets laws.

Note the common thread: laws.

Laws provide the stability and safety necessary for New Yorkers to walk our dogs at 11 p.m., and for the private sector to invest billions in corporate headquarters.

A Mayor Mamdani would lead the executive branch, with the primary responsibility of implementing and enforcing laws.

His campaign is effectively a job interview, which allows us to assess his views on and understanding of the law.

Helpfully, he has revealed a great deal about both.

Take Mamdani’s repeated threat to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, purportedly to enforce a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court.

Yet the United States is not a member state of the ICC, as Mamdani should know — and if he nevertheless orders the NYPD to execute the warrant, he would violate the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act of 2001, which prohibits any “local government” from cooperating with or providing support to the ICC.

Without the ICC warrant, Mamdani has no legal means to arrest a sitting prime minister. Even a non-citizen like Netanyahu enjoys the Fourth Amendment’s protection against arrests without warrants or probable cause — a point on which Mamdani is well-versed when it comes to his crusade against Immigration and Customs Enforcement.   

Then there’s “Stop the Squeeze on NYC Homeowners,” Mamdani’s plan to “shift the tax burden” away from “outer boroughs” and onto “whiter neighborhoods.”

Apart from its manifest racism, the plan evinces an appalling ignorance of the Constitution and civil rights law — the 14th Amendment and Section 1981 of the Federal Civil Rights Act exist to prevent the kind of race-based tax system Mamdani envisions.   

In his “Protecting New York’s Tenants” plan, Mamdani vows to seize property from wayward landlords (vaguely, those who “do not work with” his administration or are “ripping off” tenants) “through a public foreclosure process” after doubling and tripling fines for code violations.

Mamdani’s campaign website breezily compares this idea to the way the city’s Department of Health shutters a dirty restaurant, without delving into how he might legally extend the concept to housing.

That’s a question we should ask.

Theoretically, by increasing fines, the city could artificially place otherwise financially healthy properties in fiscal distress, and such distress could trigger a foreclosure proceeding.

However, the city would be entitled only to the value of the outstanding fines, not the value of the building — a government cannot capitalize on the real property investment of a private citizen.

Further, under Mamdani’s plan, the city would not just recover the fines owed, but become the property’s owner.

In foreclosure, property is auctioned to the highest bidder — is Mamdani suggesting the city act as a fair-market participant, even though it is initiating the proceeding? And guarantee to outbid the field?

Again, the Constitution answers with a resounding no: The Fifth Amendment’s protection against unjust governmental takings and the 14th Amendment’s protection against arbitrary enforcement of laws guard against seizures on the basis of such whims.

It seems our Founders had a good idea of what might imperil our democracy.    

What’s most revealing is not that Mamdani’s plans are illegal, but that he appears never to have bothered considering whether they are.

Indeed, whether he can legally implement his promises seems irrelevant to him.

For those of us who are not avowed Marxists, it’s hard to respect a campaign that hasn’t done its homework.

But it’s not surprising: Mamdani is an ideologue who has never held a job that required him to exhibit the discipline to operate within the confines of what is practical or legal.

This candidate may wish to imprison Netanyahu, tax white New Yorkers and seize property, but making his wishes reality requires a legal basis.

If Mamdani is hell-bent on destroying the status quo, he would be well-advised to first understand it. 

Susan Greene is a partner at Holzman Vogel, where she specializes in commercial litigation and constitutional law.