For myself, I think so. If the president just ignores the checks and balances placed on the executive by the courts, then the only remedy is impeachment. If the congress refuses to act, then what? I think this would set a precedent that could never be erased and the Constitution would effectively be a dead letter. Why should any President going forward take the judiciary or SCOTUS seriously if the President’s party holds congress?
Yes. He is operating outside the law and none of our institutions are curtailing his behavior. America is post-democracy.
“All democracies turn into dictatorships—but not by coup. The people give their democracy to a dictator, whether it’s Julius Caesar or Napoleon or Adolf Hitler. Ultimately, the general population goes along with the idea”
― George Lucas
On a better day, I’d probably add a half-hearted “almost” to the beginning of that quote, but not today. And of course, it is a factor of time and the strength of the guardrails placed upon said Democracy. The USA has been very, very proud of it’s rule of law, but put far more trust in it’s traditions, which were cast aside with casual contempt when the masses found a populist leader who had no use for them.
It’s not unique to us, and it’s not only happening to us, but our greatest arrogance (among many!) is the thought “it would never happen to us.”
And the saddest, and possibly most inevitable part of it, is that more so than anytime the above has happened in the past, is that those who voted for it (a majority of voters) had no excuses NOT to know what they were sacrificing, no matter how biased their news sources. They have chosen to end democracy for themselves and everyone else in the nation, and are cheering for it.
I mean, the US never really was a democracy. The US is undergoing democratic backsliding, but it isn’t like we were a bastion of freedom in our history.
Slavery and Jim Crow meant the US was an oppressive dictatorship with horrible human rights for black people up until a few decades ago.
Women had no power or rights until a century ago.
The US is obviously backsliding, but its nowhere near where we were in 1900.
Anyway, I have no idea what the future holds. 70-80 million Americans support an incompetent, treasonous, felon dictator as president. They vote for his enablers in congress. How long does democracy last when half the voters don’t want it?
I’m hoping the ‘worst case scenario’ is we become a hybrid democracy-authoritarian regime like Hungary for a few decades until the public restores the country to a full democracy. I’m hoping we have enough checks and balances on the local, state and federal level to prevent full authoritarianism.
I feel like this is debate is going in a different direction than I intended. I understand that democracy in the US has ebbed and flowed. I am not really interested in talking about democracy. I am interested in talking about the rule of law in America. I am not sure that the rule of law is dependent on whether the US is a democracy or not.
What I want to talk about is whether the rule of law, i.e. the validity of the Constitution as a binding legal contract, is alive if congress does not defend it when Trump trounces all over it in the name of MAGA. When do we consider the Constitution a dead letter?
“Democracy is a work in progress. So is democracy’s undoing.”
–David Frum, former George W. Bush speechwriter
[ETA: sorry on two fronts. I didn’t see this was in GD and I hadn’t read the OP’s last post. Mea culpa]
It’s dead Jim.
Seriously, this was Trump in 2020 after he lost:
“A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” he wrote. “Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”
Technically, I’d say it’s Undead. A pretty fresh undead. In that the framework can and will be seen, and paid lip service too, but MAGA is already removing any efforts to allow it to protect anyone they don’t approve of, such as Birthright Citizenship.
And the rest of us, who don’t have millions of followers, guns, and dollars, are still going to be held accountable to it.
But the rule of law, as a thing that’s applied to all individuals regardless of station had always been threadbare and weak, was on life support during Trump 1.0, and died when Trump wasn’t held accountable by Republicans for Jan6.
Now it’s a corpse that’s just started to rot.
Regarding what Trump said in 2020, I do believe that Trump wants it dead. Actually, maybe that is not completely accurate; I think he doesn’t give a shit about it.
But what about the Supreme Court? Does Roberts think it is dead or want it dead? What about Barrett? Kavanaugh? Do the majority of Republicans in the house and senate think it is dead or want it dead? If Trump tells the Supreme Court “you have made your decision, now enforce it,” will the Republicans in congress say “screw SCOTUS, we like where this is going?” Will they realize what this would mean to the rule of law? Am I wrong on what this would mean to the rule of law in this country?
I disagree with you that the rule of law is a corpse. What has been irretrievably broken at this point? Trump’s statement that 2020 “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, articles, even those found in the Constitution” does not make it so. Why do you believe this statement has legal weight? In what world does Trump saying the rules are terminated means they are?
Sure, the justice department position that a sitting President cannot be tried for a crime has let Trump off the hook for now due to his reelection. It certainly appears likely he will escape justice for his crimes on January 6th. His pardon of the rioters was reprehensible but perfectly legal. But if he finishes his term and a Democrat is elected in 2028 could he still be prosecuted by Jack Smith? Sure. Why not? Assuming the transfer of power takes place smoothly and he doesn’t pardon himself, there is nothing in place now that should stop it. It is this assumption that I am wanting to debate about.
My thesis is this: the rule of law is still intact but under dire threat. The wheels still grind slowly and fine. Trump is taking many actions that are of questionable legality. In fact, many on their face are patently illegal. They are being challenged in court. The cases will be decided by a justice system that I still believe is relatively intact. Sure, you have some folks out there to whom the rule of law means little (Ilean Qanon or however you spell her name) and some folks that would like to just rewrite the law to fit their worldview (Thomas, Alito, Ho, Kacsmaryk, etc…), but I still think the majority of justices believe in the law and the constitution. I believe these judges and justices will defend the Constitution and the rule of law. And I believe there is a good chance Trump will not care what the rule.
The real question is what will congress do? Will they let the rule of law slip away? Will they realize that if a SCOTUS ruling can be ignored once that all their rulings are meaningless? Will the Republican’s in congress just stand by while Donald Trump wipes his ass with the Constitution and flushes 225 years of legal history down the toilet?
Before you answer, know that this has never happened before. Andrew Jackson’s famous quote regarding Worcester v. Georgia is apocryphal. It wasn’t Jackson that disobeyed ignored the court ruling, it was the state of Georgia. Andrew Jackson was never asked to intervene to enforce the decision, but if he had been those in the know say he was unlikely to. The quote was first written 20 years after his death in a history of the events leading to the civil war.
But it never came to that. A treaty was signed. The governor of Georgia released Worcester. The Constitutional crisis was avoided. Sidestepped.
No, they want the power to define and more importantly, REdefine every part of the Constitution that abrogates their power. Roberts and the other conservative SCOTUS members, like the rest of Trump-supporting congress-critters, think they’ll keep riding the tiger. That they and theirs will stay wealthy and in power, and do not CARE what happens to anyone else.
So sure, “the law” and “the constitution” will exist. But if they keep getting their way, complete with the SCOTUS providing covering fire, again, the laws and constitution will be redefined to protect only them and their ilk.
Press “X” to doubt. If Trump lives out his term, and is replaced by a Democrat, doesn’t self-pardon, and doesn’t “run” again or just demand another turn to make up for the “stolen” one or any of the other IFs, he’s proven the system will keep protecting him as long as he can whip up the mob against everyone.
And again, major doubt. The best HOPE for the rule of law being revived is that Trump drops dead from Musk-envy, the sooner the better, and that massive Republican/MAGA infighting over who will wear the crown fractures them.
Seriously, I wish you were right. I hope that you are right. But I see zero evidence of it. Congress hasn’t done anything about blatantly illegal abuse of Congressional power, and barely said anything about it. Sure, they may see the possibility of becoming a rubber stamp, but it’ll keep them in perks and money for the foreseeable future… and if they fight back (see Cheney) they’re out as leper outcast unclean.
Ride the tiger and all. As long as Trump has his mob, for them it’s all about this:
It is better to be the right hand of the devil than in his path.
trump does not yet own the military or intelligence agency leadership. A coup isn’t successful without the military. That said, if there is an “intervention”, not sure how the Constitution survives that?
In the world in which we are living. Trump is repeatedly breaking laws and ignoring court orders and suffers no consequences. If you think that there is going to be a proclamation that rule of law is dead, that’s not how authoritarianism works. The rules will be applied selectively, the law will be used to crush his enemies (as is happening already) and not applied to Trump and his cronies (as is happening already). The rule of law is already dead.
Depends who your friends are. It will be enforced, negatively, on you. Positively? Where’s your checkbook?
Give it time. We’ve already seen that the Senate has abdicated its advice and consent role, basically giving Trump loyalists in pretty much every department in the Executive Branch. He’s not stopping there. He is going to order his Secretaries to clean house several strata below the Sec-level. He’s going layers deep into the bureaucracy, and the Courts are very unlikely to stop him. He will have loyalists embedded throughout the entire Executive Branch bureaucracy - not just at the top, but layers deep. He will fundamentally change the cultures of how these Departments and agencies function. Most notably, that includes the DoD and the DoJ.
I’m reminded of the apocryphal Andrew Jackson quote upon losing a Supreme Court decision disallowing removal of native tribes.:
“John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it”
It strikes me that we really don’t have solid recourse if Trump choses to ignore any ultimate Supreme Court decision.
As mentioned in other threads, it might give various states and entities ammunition (proverbially) to ignore the Federal government. Such as “We cannot support any federal taxes / assistance / etc. as long as said government is in non-compliance with the law as rendered in SCOTUS decision XYZ. Once the federal government is in compliance with the law, we will of course be happy to deal with our obligations.”
Note, I do not say this is exactly a GOOD idea, because I’d put 10-to-1 odds Trump would love it for the pretext, declare martial law, and fast track us to a medium-hot Civil War. But it’s been mentioned before in other threads on various levels of civil disobedience to Trump’s criminal actions as POTUS.
Never thought that Attack of the Clones would be one of the more prescient movies of its age. I guess that makes the electorate Jar Jar Binks.
Anyway, the past eight years, and many would argue the past 25 years since Bush v. Gore, has demonstrated just how rickety the Constitution is as a governing document for a big nation state in the 21st century. Like anything else, it works well enough when most people are acting in good faith and at least trying to do what’s in the best interests of the country. Not so much when you have the governing party breaking shit and wiping its ass with the rule of law. And it doesn’t help that those who profess to be most worshipful of the Constitution are cheering Trump on as he manhandles and has his way with it.
I think that applies to any government. The Soviet Union had a constitution that guaranteed the rights of its citizens, but Soviet officials just ignored it when convenient. The best written constitution isn’t helpful if everyone decides to ignore it. A truth I didn’t fully appreciate until recently.
That’s the part that’s most galling. The Right have been clamoring for years about federal power taking over and government overreach and liberty and standing up to the federal government. They claim to be the true patriots. They’ve been defending the right to own high-powered, high capacity semi-auto firearms and dodges that enhance fire rate, despite mass shootings on a near daily basis and turning nightclubs, malls, schools, and concerts into shooting galleries, in the name of protection from government tyranny. They worship Ruby Ridge and the Branch Davidians in Waco. Yet here they are cheering on the trashing of the Constitution and the federal government marching in to cities and the complete disregard for the rule of law.
SCOTUS will be inundated with Constitutional challenges over the plethora of executive orders when they bubble up to their level. There might be one or two who champion the words of the old document yet they will be outvoted. And then time will run out. Seeya!
Article I will be back up and running once Central Services receives and processes a 27B stroke 6 form.
A lawyer writing in Salon suggests that if the federal government refuses to abide by court orders, judges could simply start refusing to hear cases where the government is the plaintiff.