Protect Democracy has produced a report on how President Trump has attacked the American judiciary, and compares it to the tactics used in other countries which have slid significantly towards authoritarianism:
In his comments and tweets – starting during his presidential campaign, and only accelerating during his presidency – Trump has attacked federal judges personally and institutionally in ways that no president has ever even approached before. He says he knows he’s not supposed to criticize the courts – “I would never want to do that,” he says – then he does. We’ve compiled this tracker outlining Trump’s longstanding assault on the courts.
It reveals the frequency with which Trump personally ridicules judges who defy him. He calls them out by name, claims they are unfair, and declares that they are biased because of their ethnic backgrounds.
He demeans judges who rule against him and questions their authority to review executive actions. He labels adverse judicial opinions as “ridiculous” and “disgraceful.”
He threatens judges who limit his power by saying they’ll be to blame in the case of a terrorist attack. He mocks the federal court system as inept.
And then they provide the details.
The delegitimization of the Federal judiciary is an attack on one of the three legs of the stool that is our governmental system, and should be considered by every citizen to be beyond the pale – that is, every action taken by President Trump, or other governmental officials, in retaliation against a judge who has ruled against them should be considered evidence of his failure to protect the American democracy from threats, foreign and domestic, and should be a piece of evidence in the consideration of the House when it decides whether or not to bring impeachment charges against the President.
In this perspective, Trump is the emblematic ignorant, arrogant executive. He’s spent all his life in real estate and reality shows, and believes, apparently with no supporting study, that he’s qualified to run a government without help. Trade wars are “simple to win.” And he doesn’t need a judiciary to keep him on the straight and narrow. He’s too good for that.
But it’s worth going back and looking at the hoary old analogy I drew with a stool. What happens when a three legged stool loses a leg?
It falls over.
By the same token, a democratic government without an independent judiciary is also completely unstable. It presages a descent into arbitrary chaos, for either there are no judges – or their allegiance isn’t to the law, nor even their ideologies (illicit enough itself), but to the Parties which put them in their seats – and can unseat them if they misbehave. Now application to government becomes critical for any endeavour to succeed, because those holding power in government can do anything they want.
It’s no longer a republic or a democracy.
Trump and his ilk cry foul when An unelected judge rules against them? So much better an unlected judge does than that hapless creature, the elected judge, threatened in every decision by the angry mob with its punch cards and pens! For now his future livelihood is influenced by his judgments, and so only the strong, independently wealthy judge can afford to ignore the current whimsy affecting the masses. Do you doubt this? Remember the fates of the Iowa State Supreme Court justices who ruled for gay marriage back in 2009. After an unanimous ruling for marriage equality, the three up for re-election, with no opponents, lost their re-election bids.
That makes the Judiciary a joke, and therefore the law is a joke. And if the law is a joke, that makes the Legislative Branch a joke, a pack of ineffective, feeble dogs pursuing sinecures, unable to do anything to help lead the nation.
And then the United States begins the move from first world status to second world status. Because we couldn’t look at ourselves and recognize a threat to a vital institution and forbid attacks on it.
But this doesn’t have to happen. The alarmed reader can contact their Congressional representatives and demand action. They can write the President and tell him not to deliberately weaken our government.
Because attacks on the judiciary are not attacks on this political party, or that political party.
They are attacks on all of us.
