C_Clayton_Jones
Diamond Member
‘In Marbury v. Madison (1803), Chief Justice John Marshall declared that “it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is”—and, he might have added, for the other branches of government to accept the court’s judgment as authoritative, even when they disagree with it.
[…]
The core problem with Mr. Trump’s understanding of the Constitution goes even deeper. During his first term, he told an audience at an event: “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.” Article II gives a president broad powers, but Mr. Trump’s comment amounts to saying that a president’s decisions take precedence over those of the Article III branch (the judiciary) and the Article I branch (Congress). Much of what Mr. Trump has done in the early months of his second term rests on this proposition, which runs counter to the theory and letter of the Constitution. Congress and the judiciary are coordinate, not subordinate, branches of our government.
Mr. Trump’s approach represents the danger against which James Madison warned in Federalist No. 47: “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” When executive orders supersede legislation and judges are threatened with impeachment for doing their jobs, this could be the eventual result.’
Trump is indeed the very definition of tyranny – arrogant, authoritarian, anti-democratic, with contempt for the rule of law and Constitution.
[…]
The core problem with Mr. Trump’s understanding of the Constitution goes even deeper. During his first term, he told an audience at an event: “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.” Article II gives a president broad powers, but Mr. Trump’s comment amounts to saying that a president’s decisions take precedence over those of the Article III branch (the judiciary) and the Article I branch (Congress). Much of what Mr. Trump has done in the early months of his second term rests on this proposition, which runs counter to the theory and letter of the Constitution. Congress and the judiciary are coordinate, not subordinate, branches of our government.
Mr. Trump’s approach represents the danger against which James Madison warned in Federalist No. 47: “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” When executive orders supersede legislation and judges are threatened with impeachment for doing their jobs, this could be the eventual result.’
Trump is indeed the very definition of tyranny – arrogant, authoritarian, anti-democratic, with contempt for the rule of law and Constitution.
