If you look it up, though, you will discover that “Qui tam” is shorthand for “Qui tam pro domino rege quam pro se ipso in hac parte sequitur,” which makes much more sense: “Who prosecutes in this matter both for the King and for himself.” . . .
‘Snitch’ rewards for college whistleblowers are a reckoning for woke weenies
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Roger Kimball
“Snitch” rewards for college whistleblowers are a reckoning for woke weenies
A new day is dawning in academia
Sunday, June 1, 2025
Pam Bondi
Donald Trump (L) watches as Pam Bondi speaks (Getty)
Like Papal encyclicals, many statutes are known by the opening words of their Latin formulation. One that I just learned about is known as a “Qui tam” action. By itself, it is an enigmatic expression, since it just means “Who so” or “Who as.”
If you look it up, though, you will discover that “Qui tam” is shorthand for “Qui tam pro domino rege quam pro se ipso in hac parte sequitur,” which makes much more sense: “Who prosecutes in this matter both for the King and for himself.” That tam, as is often the case, is balanced with quam, “as x, so y.” Spinoza contains a famous example toward the end of the Ethics: “Sed omnia praeclara tam difficilia quam rara sunt”: “For all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.” And then there is sequitur. I remember when I learned that the deponent verb sequor, “I follow,” also means “prosecute,” as in the motto of the Department of Justice: “Qui Pro Domina Justitia Sequitur,” “Who prosecutes for Lady Justice.”
But I digress…
The origins of “Qui tam” statutes are ancient. Noting that they were intended to “enlist the public to sue to recover civil penalties and forfeitures from those who have defrauded the government,” one historical overview cites King Wihtred of Kent who in 695 declared that “If a freeman works during the forbidden time [i.e., the Sabbath], he shall forfeit his healsfang [fine, mulct], and the man who informs against him shall have half the fine, and [the profits arising] from the labour.”
Nota bene: “The man who informs against him” profits.
How do you spell “incentive”?
This aspect of the procedure – what we might call the “snitch provision” – has always attracted criticism. Because they rewarded private individuals for informing against their fellows, qui tam actions were long ago castigated as a “breeding ground for ‘viperous vermin’ and parasites.” Nevertheless, English law sometimes resorted to qui tam actions when the enforcement of certain statutes appeared “beyond the unaided capacity or interest of authorized law enforcement officials.”
It was the same in America. The colonists frequently employed qui tam actions to curb instances of fraud, rewarding an informer with some portion of the funds recovered from his revelation.
Modern instances of qui tam center around so-called “False Claims” actions. In 1863, in the Civil War, an act was introduced by Senator Jacob Howard to address a spate of “false claims, false vouchers, false oaths, forged signatures, theft, embezzlement, and conspiracy.” The act, Howard explained, deliberately employed “the old-fashion idea of holding out a temptation, …‘setting a rogue to catch a rogue.’”
The False Claims Act has been revised several times in the succeeding century an a half, most recently in 2010. Its provisions are set forth in 31 U.S. Code § 3729.
All this might seem like an arcane bit of legal history. In fact, false claims actions, especially against defense contractors and the health industry, have been something of a growth industry in recent year. In 2024, such actions quietly brought in more than $2.9 billion. And the Trump administration, as part of its effort to purge American colleges and universities of illegal and discriminatory practices, has just turned up the volume to 11 and brought the False Claims Act back to center stage of public consciousness.
On May 19, Todd Blanche, the Deputy Attorney General issued a memorandum announcing that the administration would begin employing the False Claims Act to investigate those “who defraud the United States by taking its money while knowingly violating civil rights laws… and falsely [certifying] compliance with such laws.”
Have you ever witnessed verbal dynamite being detonated? Here is an example:
“Accordingly, a university that accepts federal funds could violate the False Claims Act when it encourages antisemitism, refuses to protect Jewish students, allows men to intrude into women’s bathrooms, or requires women to compete against men in athletic competitions. Colleges and universities cannot accept federal funds while discriminating against their students. The False Claims Act is also implicated whenever federal-funding recipients or contractors certify compliance with civil rights laws while knowingly engaging in racist preferences, mandates, policies, programs, and activities, including through diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs that assign benefits or burdens on race, ethnicity, or national origin. While racial discrimination has always been illegal, the prohibition on such policies became clear after the Supreme Court stated that “[e]liminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”
Make them pay.
