I don’t understand the American system of government, sometimes. Elected officials can just decided who to investigate or not? Is there no legal concept of prosecutorial independence?
There use to be, it seems to have evaporated. Part of our checks and balances failing.
I trust nothing from the admin either. And any injury that occurred was ridiculusly minor. And clearly did not warrant the response. But a bunch of you please consider whether you wish to acknowledge that he may have received a glancing blow. Because I thought the certainty upthread was that he didn’t.
You live in Israel, correct? Are Israeli prosecutors entirely free of political interference and direction? I ask merely out of ignorance. To what extent could prosecutors investigate and prosecute in the face of direct opposition by your Prime Minister and a majority of the Knesset?
Here in the US, the Department of Justice was traditionally considered largely - but not entirely - independent. The administration could encourage certain investigations, but was not supposed to directly decide whether or not to investigate/prosecute - not to mention the outcome of any investigation.
Turns out that - as with so much of the rest of US government, that was largely just an assumption that administrations would not be entirely corrupt, and that Congress would not abdicate their role. Trump is making continued efforts to eliminate the presumed independence of just about every aspect of the federal government. It truly is unprecedented, ugly, and frightening.
The Netanyahu Administration has been trying to fire the Attorney General for almost a year now, and the courts keep blocking them. It’s one of the biggest political stories in the country.
If the US government still worked the way it was suppose to the Courts and Congress would be reining in the President. This had eroded slowly with the years as greater power was taken to the President, but never in any way shape or form like this.
Moderating: I split this side conversation out of the ICE thread.
And has it resulted in any actual consequences for Netanyahu?
Lots of countries think that they have various government offices “independent” of the political bodies, but that’s not actually possible. The “independent” offices have to be chosen somehow, and someone has to make sure they stay independent, and so on, and ultimately that all traces back to the politicians.
He’s still on trial in three different corruption cases, so yes. She’s also blocked some terrible laws and prevented him from prosecuting his enemies.
It could al collapse tomorrow, of course. You’re not the only one worried about your country’s democratic future.
One of Bibi’s biggest goals is the “Americanization” of the Israeli justice system - giving more power control to the executive branch, meaning him. He’s been trying to take over processes like appointing judges and prosecutors, which up until now have been in the hands of nonpartisan committees.
I’m disgusted by three things.
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That Netanyahu is doing that.
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That doing that is called “Americanization”.
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But most of all, that the label is accurate.
Here, the extent to which the courts will restrain Trump is still to be decided.
First, our courts (generally) move very slowly. So Trump is able to cause a great deal of harm before appeals are exhausted. And delaying court proceedings has long been his trademark.
Second, Trump appointed many judges/justices, many (but not all) of whom seem willing forego impartiality.
Third, Trump has so effectively flooded the zone that there are countless legal challenges to innumerable offensive and ostensibly illegal actions, essentially overwhelming the courts. And the outrages keep coming. Last week he kidnapped a sitting president. Then his forces shot an unarmed citizen. Tomorrow, he may invade/bomb Iran. It is hard not to experience outrage exhaustion.
Fourth, Congress has completely given up their authority to act as a check and balance.
Having said that, there remain any number of pending suits. The fat lady has not yet sung - tho there is no guarantee of eventual justice given our corrupt Supreme Court. And we have not yet gotten to the point where the Supremes issue a direct ruling against Trump and he just tells them to pound sand.
Ugly times indeed. I wonder if, in their wildest dreams, Trump and his supporters/enablers believed he would have as much success as he has so far.
And has any of those trials resulted in any consequences?
I mean, Trump has a lot of cases where he’s no longer on trial, because he actually lost them. And he still hasn’t faced any actual consequences. Just being on trial means absolutely nothing.
I don’t know the context of this question, so I’ll just answer it straight up.
The DOJ (prosecutors) / FBI (police) are part of the executive branch. Per the Constitution, all executive power is vested in the President. So by intent, law enforcement and politics are mixed together.
Assuming you mean law enforcement investigation, then only the FBI agents open cases on who to investigate. Only the attorney prosecutors charge the accused. There is a concept of prosecutorial independence, but we then rely on norms to keep agents/prosecutors independent of President personal involvement/pressure. Norms are not laws or are not binding. So not illegal, just no longer normal.
Longer term solutions would be during election cycles to only elect people who will uphold those norms and nominate FBI directors and DOJ attorney generals who believe in those norms (and unselect officials who do not).
Even with corrupt investigations and charging, ultimately it will be decided in the Judicial branch where there are different safeguards/can look back to the executive branch corruption.
Aren’t norms essentially the same things as precedents, and aren’t precedents binding in a common-law system? Say a federal prosecutor is ordered to prosecute someone, refuses, and is fired. Can’t they go to a judge and ask for an injunction against them being fired on unfair grounds?
He’s a convicted felon and AFAIK the biggest consequence of that is the bumper sticker where a person proudly says that they voted for a felon.
The norms I’m describing are voluntary. Norms are real and develop over time, but they don’t have any legal effect. I tend to forget that part because it feels very permanent / surely that must be illegal.
Prosecutors serve at the pleasure of the President. If the prosecutor was fired only because they refused to prosecute, I don’t think much could/would happen. I only hesitate because of all the shit that situation would actually entail, but cleanly, while it sucks, it’s all legal.
These are the constitutional basics as I understand them. It all just relies on norms and political pressure. There is plenty of nuance I am surely missing, so hopefully someone can fill in blanks.
Late: I’ll just say the DOJ I know and loved, was post-Nixon until now’ish. Prior to that, it was pretty political like it is today.
No, at least to the extent that you can call the US a “common law system.”
They can ask. But they’re not likely to get an injunction. (Keeping your job is rare in any employment case. More commonly someone would get compensation for an unlawful termination, but even those cases are limited to protected classes and people fired for reasons that are against public policy). I doubt a judge would prohibit a firing of someone who disregarded an order from their superior to file charges against someone. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s happened on some unique set of facts, but it’s not routine or common (or likely).
The last sentence is true, but that doesn’t mean that independent institutions aren’t possible. It just means that their independence depends on self-policing, so for them to exist requires an adherence by the government to behavioural norms and a sense of integrity. I think we’ve more or less achieved that in Canada with respect to institutions like the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) and the non-partisan autonomy of the Governor General (usually – we had one real jerk in the position at one time) and the Supreme Court. The CBC operates under a strict journalistic code of ethics and an explicitly defined arms-length relationship with Parliament. Any attempt by the government in power to meddle with CBC reporting would be extremely obvious and blatantly illegal.
To be fair, many conservatives in Canada believe that the CBC has a liberal bias. In some respects this may be true, inasmuch as their programming, particularly on CBC Radio, is similar in tone to that of NPR in the US, but the important thing is that they do criticize the government in power when appropriate regardless of party.
“Relying on the institutions to be self-policing” just means that each of those institutions is autocratical. Benevolent autocrats are great, until they’re not. And when they stop being benevolent, how do you fix that?
Several opposing autocracies is still better than just one.
Yes Minister: Season 3, Episode 7 “The Middle Class Rip-Off”
Hacker: “I thought these planning inspectors were supposed to be impartial?”
Bernard: “Oh, really, Minister. So they are. Railway trains are impartial too. But if you lay down the lines for them, that’s the way they go.”