What If Hunter Biden Were Hunter Jones? The Meaning of Quid Pro Quo

So what’s with this Latin beast? Literally, it means an exchange of one thing for another, where each of these acts is contingent on the other. In other words, if the party of the first part does not actually follow through with the offer, the party of the second part is not obligated to do so either, and the parties are interchangeable.

To put this in a more common vernacular, these three words in English, “tit for tat” convey the meaning of the three words in Latin under discussion. Other such expressions include "if you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" and "one hand washes the other".

Some commentators think the phrase designates an exchange of commodities of similar value. But this is mistaken. The market value of Joe’s house is now $100,000. Pete offers to purchase it for double that amount. Only the latter knows that the proverbial railroad is coming through, and will pay much more than that. There is no roughly equivalent value, here. The house is worth much more to the buyer than the seller. But this is still a case, a paradigm case of the quid quo pro.

This arrangement applies to every single commercial arrangement in the economy. You purchase a pair of shoes. You will not cough up the money unless the seller actually hands over this good to you. For his part, he refuses to part with his property unless and until to follow through with the payment you agreed upon.

This all seems pretty innocuous. Why, then, is the quid quo pro pretty much dominating the news, nowadays? This is because, sometimes, there is a distinctively foul odor accompanying such exchanges.

A professor tells a student: if you go to bed with me, I’ll give you an A in the course; if not, you’ll get an F. That’s a pretty nasty quid quo pro. Should all such offers be banned by law? No. It all depends upon the property rights involved. Suppose that same professor started up a university of his own. He was front and center about his purposes: he wants to enhance his sex life. He calls his new emporium Quid Quo Pro University. He even has banners and sweatshirts made up extolling the virtues of QQPU. Its primary policy: if you have sexual intercourse with the college president (he promoted himself from being a mere professor), you get an A, if not, you fail all the courses. Will many students enroll in this university? To ask this is to answer it: of course not. But that is beside the point. The point is, did he violate any law a freedom oriented person ought to respect? No, again. This was, rather, a paradigm case of sex between consenting adults.

What then was wrong with the offer he initially made to his students? He was stealing property from his employer! He had no right to offer to exchange a course grade for sexual services; his employer greatly looked askance at all such proposals.

We conclude there is nothing amiss with the quid quo pro per se. Its invalidity, if there is any, resides solely in whether or not the initiator of the exchange is the legitimate owner of the good offered. In the case of the professor, he was not; when he became the president of the university, and its sole owner, all was well, at least insofar as the law is concerned; we abstract from morality in this analysis.

What about President Trump engaging in a quid quo pro with his counterpart in the Ukraine?  Whether this was a quid quo pro arrangement or not is irrelevant. The issue, the only issue, is whether or not he has a right to ask Volodymyr Zelensky to help determine the innocence or guilt of Hunter Biden. It is difficult to see why he did not. Yes, yes, this would help his re-election chances. So what. Suppose, instead, Trump asked Zelensky to check the bona fides of Hunter Jones. Would that have been a violation of law? Not at all. Just because Joe Biden would suffer from this request should be deemed irrelevant.