Chicago is known for a special brand of justice. Results are arranged first, and the show of getting there comes later. The same approach is associated with Chicago politics: figure out the number of votes needed for the right outcome, then find those votes (from voters dead or alive). While corruption isn't peculiar to Chicago's courts or elections-and is only an episodic fixture even there- it colors the way Chicago government is seen by others.

Now, the administration of the first Chicago resident to become President of the United States has brought a bit of Chicago to the national stage. In deciding to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to trial in federal district court in New York, President Barack Obama's Attorney General, Eric Holder, wants to embrace the rule of law-but only if that doesn't get in the way of the right result.

Holder made plain his desire to increase public confidence in America's respect for the rule of law by putting the man who boasted of being the mastermind of 9/11's atrocities on trial under rules that would apply to ordinary citizens accused of ordinary crimes. Using our standard legal process would show the world we stand by American values of justice and fair play, even for those accused of the most heinous acts. That was a line candidate Obama used during his presidential campaign, even though as Senator he had favored using a military commission to try KSM.

In the ensuing firestorm over his decision, however, Holder (answering a question from Senator Lindsey Graham) let it be known he would not permit KSM to go free, no matter what result is reached at trial. President Obama also backed a results-based rule of law, declaring that KSM will be convicted and executed. Their choice is a system of justice where the outcome is announced before-hand, and if by some quirk the judge and jury reach the wrong result, we'll ignore it.

That's justice the Chicago way.

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The rule of law means the same legal guidelines apply to everyone and apply the same way regardless of the identity of the defendant, the prosecutor, or the judge. America's commitment to the rule of law has been tested often, and in the main has held up. Twice our highest court ruled against the President of the United States in cases where the President's personal interest and political future was directly on the line, with dramatic consequences in each case (President Nixon's resignation and President Clinton's impeachment). Yet, the approach now being trumpeted by the administration would make law the servant of power, not the other way around.

If the imbroglio were about a young African-American man accused of a capital crime, would anyone defend the nation's top law enforcement officials announcing in advance that the suspect is guilty and will get the death sentence, and if a jury acquits the government will find other ways to hold him indefinitely? Do the presumption of innocence, settled rules, and binding outcomes only apply where the government acquiesces?

The issue here isn't one that should divide liberals and conservatives. No lawyer should find it acceptable to have a sham legal system with different, unwritten rules for the few defendants our top officials consider to be really bad. That is not how law is taught at any law school I know-not at Columbia (where Mr. Holder studied), at Boston University (where I was dean), or at Harvard (on the far left bank of the Charles River, where President Obama received his training). It is not how we want others to see our legal system or how we want it to be.

Critics of the Bush administration's handling of terror cases complained its procedures for trying enemy combatants tilted the playing field too much toward the government. Fair process here, the claim went, will inspire fair process for Americans tried elsewhere. If there is sense to that contention, it has considerably less bite in the context of military commissions than trials in civilian courts, where process distortions are more evident and strains needed to accommodate military and national security concerns more pronounced.

A trial in our system isn't ever totally predictable. A judge might decide the defendant cannot get a fair trial after so many public pronouncements of his guilt by our highest ranking legal and political officials; or rules limiting admissible evidence (because of how it was gathered or because the government is unwilling to disclose confidential information) might exclude too much of the government's case.

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No doubt the Attorney General and his advisers weighed many competing considerations about the risks and benefits of using civilian courts or military commissions. Both routes have problems, and the balance isn't as simple as each side wants to make it. But there is a larger point here, beyond whether Mr. Holder made the right decision. The actual outcome of this decision ultimately may matter less than its impact on the way our legal system is understood.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., famously opined that "great cases, like hard cases, make bad law." Deciding where to try KSM may be hard but should not be an occasion for making bad law. The President and Attorney General should have the courage of their convictions-and, having made their choice, courage respecting KSM's conviction. Trying to have it both ways by embracing a process and an outcome it might not produce directly undermines the effort to persuade domestic and international audiences that America truly is a nation of laws. Either military justice or ordinary civilian justice is preferable to Chicago justice.