View from K Street: Hubris Cubed?

Some thousands of years ago, the Israelites were a stateless people, with no hereditary monarch and no organized leadership, so they were led by a group of people guided by their understanding of their traditions and religious beliefs. We know this from the Book of Judges. The United States is a powerful state, with an elected president and Congress, but it is also led by a group of people guided by their understanding of our traditions and their religious beliefs. They are the Supreme Court.

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With the decisions issued in the last days of its most recent term, the Supreme Court rewrote the Constitution and changed the way we are governed. There’s no doubt the Founders were antimonarchical. There’s also no basis to argue against the notion that the Constitution is, at root, an antimonarchical document. The limitations placed on the elected president by the fundamental separation of powers—particularly the power of the purse, the idea of and the process for impeachment, and life terms for judges—all demonstrate that this Republic was intended to have a limited executive, one who would not, could not be a king.

For generations, our unelected judges recognized that the life terms they enjoyed also brought limitations, specifically to interpret the Constitution in keeping with both the language and the ideals of that foundational document.