The 2007 Formula 1 drivers' World Championship was decided in dramatic fashion on Sunday in Interlagos, when Kimi Raikkonen won, with Fernando Alonso third and Lewis Hamilton in eighth. The result, improbably, left Raikkonen as the champion.
Or did it?
Less than 2 hours after the race concluded, the stewards found themselves staring at clear evidence that three of the cars finishing in front of Lewis Hamilton (both BMW-Saubers and the Williams of Nico Rosberg) had been refuelled at least once during the race with fuel that was outside of the permitted temperature range (i.e. the fuel was too cold). This is a clear violation of one of the current technical regulations.
The stewards ruled that the cars should not be disqualified. Which is just as well, since that disqualification would have given Lewis Hamilton the drivers' championship and demoted Raikkonen to second place. That change would have torpedoed the waning credibility of the 2007 season. McLaren has appealed the stewards' decision to the FIA, and it seems likely that a special meeting will be convened in Paris to hear the appeal at a later date.
Predictably, the fuel temperature incident has led to yet more vituperation in discussion forums, especially since McLaren have filed an appeal. Ron Dennis has been described in deeply unflattering terms by many commenters, who appear to be of the opinion that McLaren, having been stripped of their Constructors' Championship points and fined a lot of money (exact amount unknown, but it would keep me in Lear Jet flights for the rest of my days), have no basis to complain or appeal. Since McLaren is guilty of industrial espionage, so the commenters argue, they should STFU.
Most of those comments are total horseshit.
Some historical perspective is in order.
In 1994, the Benetton of Jos Verstappen was briefly engulfed in a fire at a refuelling stop during the German Grand Prix in Hockenheim. The cause of the incident was quickly traced to the removal of a filter in the fuelling rig, against the regulations laid down by the FIA. Benetton were summoned to appear in Paris in September. The team's guilt seemed obvious. They had never denied the removal of the filter; instead they changed their story 3 times concerning why it had been removed, and then attempted to undermine the credibility of Intertechnique (the refuelling rig suppliers) by commissioning their own "independent" report which exonerated the team. Under the regulations at the time, Benetton seemed likely to lose all of their points scored in 1994. This would have been rather awkward, since Michael Schumacher of Benetton was in the lead in the championship, and German interest in F1 was booming as a result. A lot of money was poised to flow into F1 from Germany.
Amazingly, Benetton did not lose any points. In one of the great sporting administration finagles of all time, the team was found guilty, but their points were not forfeited. This result amazed most onlookers, since the rules seemed to be clear, Benetton had broken them, and the proper punishment was exclusion from the championship.
The significance of this history lesson is: nothing is quite as it superficially seems whenever the FIA is administering justice and enforcing regulations in F1.
Starting at the beginning; the FIA is not a legal body in the sense that it administers motorsport the same way that a court system operates. It is a sporting body. That gives it a lot more leeway than a court system, which has to be seen to be operating according to prevailing legal rules and precedents.
Secondly; top-flight motorsport is horrendously expensive. The simple rule that all top teams, drivers and other players always adhere to; Follow The Money. Any source of cash is not to be spurned. (This goes some way towards explaining why some of the sources of money in top-flight motorsport had their origins in businesses that could fairly be described as shady, and why some of the leading practitioners in motorsport often give the impression of being ethically unaware).
Thirdly; any time large sums of money are involved, there are power games. The history of Formula 1 is full of examples of power games, notably the FISA-FOCA "war" in the 1979-82 timeframe, which nearly tore the sport apart at the time. Since many of the leading figures in Formula 1, in addition to being staggeringly, unfuckingbelievably rich, also have massive egos, power games are not only inevitable; it is inevitable that they will be elaborate in a way that makes Machiavelli look like an innocent naif, and will continue over years or even decades, since the amounts of money involved result in long decision timeframes and the need for players to stay in the game a long time to recover their investment.
Putting those three realities together, what does the history of FIA administration tell us? Here are some fairly-well established facts:

1. Bernie Ecclestone is THE power-broker in Formula 1, and will be until they nail his coffin lid shut.
2. Max Moseley is a supreme politician in the sense of being able to navigate through competing interests while advancing his own interests and those of the FIA. Since Formula 1 is at the apex of world-wide motorsport, anything that impacts Formula 1 also impacts the FIA, and by extension, impacts Max Moseley.
3. Because of (1) and (2), Max Moseley and Bernie Ecclestone are intertwined in a way that violates all known variants of the phrase "conflict of interest". They were colleagues for decades, have deeply complementary skills (Moseley, the urbane multi-lingual political player, Ecclestone the cunning schemer) and have shared interests in keeping Formula 1 at the pinnacle of world motorsport.
4. All public pronouncements by figures associated with Formula 1 should never be taken at face value (or anything remotely approaching face value). They are usually part of some power or influence game.

Taking those facts into account, it is incredibly naive of any observer of F1 to expect that any FIA action taken to enforce Formula 1 rules will always be consistent, properly formulated, and applied consistently. Most of the rantings on discussion forums and bulletin boards, bluntly, are missing this reality altogether. They are fixated on personalities, often based on national, driver or team allegiances, and assume that everything is black-and-white, and that there is some legal "gold standard" against which all FIA enforcement actions can be positively measured.

Let us look at some of the current realities in Formula 1, and see how they might affect any distribution of "justice" by the FIA:

1. Ferrari is not a major motor car manufacturer (it cannot produce too many Ferraris or it will reduce its brand equity), and has to fund its F1 program via sponsorship income, and other motorsport-related revenues, even though it is owned by Fiat. (Fiat is not in the best of financial health as a car company). As part of this strategy, Ferrari supplies engines to 2 other F1 teams (Spyker and Toro Rosso). It also has just concluded a deal to supply engines and chassis to the GP2 series in the future. All of these activities mean that Ferrari has a very heavy exposure to the health of Formula 1, and that it also has a lot of influence by virtue of its position as an engine supplier.
2. Ron Dennis and Max Moseley do not have a good relationship. By all accounts, they have clashed in the past, and both men see the other as rivals.
3. Williams is currently refusing to accept a re-wording of the Concorde Agreement which would permit customer cars, arguing that the involvement of the FIA is invalid; their argument is that the FIA has no role in writing such rules, which should be the province of the teams. This is preventing new entrants (i.e. ProDrive) from entering F1 starting in 2008, and is also causing pain for the current "customer" teams of Toro Rosso and Super Aguri, since they risk having their proposed 2008 cars declared ineligible. Jackie Stewart is a key figure in the Williams team, since he is associated with RBS, a lead sponsor for Williams.

Put all of these items above together, and the recent events in F1 that have impacted the 2007 Championships no longer seem like aberrations, and instead form part of the complex and ever-unfolding F1 power games.
For example, Max Moseley's outburst where he described Jackie Stewart as "a certified half-wit" was quite possibly not uttered because Moseley and Stewart have an antagonism dating back to the 1970's when Stewart campaigned for better driver safety. The outburst may be Max Moseley's way of undermining Stewart inside the Williams team, in order to make Williams more accomodating of regulation changes to permit customer cars. Moseley knows that he cannot pick on Frank Williams, since picking on a quadriplegic team owner will result in a public firestorm. Instead he is picking on one of the leading team figures. I refuse to believe that Moseley's outburst against Stewart was motivated by old grudges. Moseley is far too smart to do that.
The FIA decision to exclude McLaren from the 2007 Constructor's Championship was motivated partly by the desire to support Ferrari, which has (inevitably) suffered from the retirement of Michael Schumacher. Ferrari is the single most charismatic team in F1; no other team comes close. A Ferrari "gift" of the 2007 Championships will immensely help the finances in Maranello.
McLaren's appeal of the Brazil stewards' decision is part of the power game being played out over it's $100m fine. The fine is netted off against the revenues that McLaren would have earned in the Constructors' Championship this season from prize monies. Finishing higher at Interlagos will increase those notional revenues, thus reducing the size of the cheque that McLaren will have to send to the FIA. It also helps that launching an appeal may force the FIA to have to hold another special hearing, which will once again require Max Moseley to deploy his charm and persuasive abilities, if he wants to avoid upsetting the Ferrari championships.

Those who want to understand how the FIA approaches justice should read this article, which explains in detail how they went about ensuring that a clear breach of the technical regulations by Benetton did not result in the exclusion of that team from the 1994 Championship, because the financial consequences were too horrible for Bernie Ecclestone to contemplate.
Within F1, nothing is as straightforward as it seems.