Reich on the End of Law

 

Today in response to JD Vance's assertion that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,”  Robert Reich wrote an essay,  "The End of Law?"

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/what-to-do-about-a-lawless-president?utm_source=substack&publication_id=365422&post_id=156421708&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&utm_campaign=email-share&triggerShare=true&isFreemail=true&r=1ra4oc&triedRedirect=true

Vance said on a 2021 podcast, “When the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say: ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”

Here’s Vance in a February 2024 interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos:

Vance: “The president has to be able to run the government as he thinks he should. That’s the way the Constitution works. It has been thwarted too much by the way our bureaucracy has worked over the past 15 years.”

Stephanopoulos: “The Constitution also says the president must abide by legitimate Supreme Court rulings, doesn’t it?”

Vance: “The Constitution says that the Supreme Court can make rulings, but if the Supreme Court — and, look, I hope that they would not do this — but if the Supreme Court said the president of the United States can’t fire a general, that would be an illegitimate ruling, and the president has to have Article II prerogative under the Constitution to actually run the military as he sees fit.”

In other words, if the Supreme Court rules against Trump on an important issue, there’s a fair chance the Trump-Vance-Musk regime will thumb their nose at it.

What then? Impeachment isn’t a possibility because Republicans run both chambers of Congress and haven’t exactly distinguished themselves with integrity or independence.

If Trump simply ignores the high court, is that the end of law?

I say yes. That's the end of law. And when law ends, things go one of two ways:

1)"In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit." --Judges 21: 25

2) “Democracy represents the disbelief in all great men and in all elite societies: everybody is everybody else's equal, 'At bottom we are all herd and mob.” Thus, the will of the Ubermensch rules.  

― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power