More Than a Little Border Dispute Between the Three Branches of Government

In granting “absolute” immunity from criminal prosecution to a sitting U.S. president conducting official business, and in undermining the partnership between Congress and the executive branch in implementing laws through regulation, the U.S. Supreme Court has become the aggressor in a guerilla war to redefine the meaning of the checks and balances that are at the foundation of the constitutional government of our nation.

Early in July, the Supreme Court’s immunity decision in Trump v. United States had the ring of partisan petulance to it. As egregious as it was, it still seemed like a complicated legal dust up between conservative Republican justices and the Biden administration’s Department of Justice over the behavior of a former Republican president tarnished and jeopardized by numerous federal indictments. Lurking behind the decision, however, are grave forebodings about turning the president into an Autocrat-in-Chief, immune from penalty even for official actions that violate the president’s principal job as outlined in his oath of office — to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”  

Then a week later in July, when the Court issued its decision in Loper Bright Enterprises ET AL v. Raimondo, Secretary of Commerce, ET AL, overturning the 40-year precedent of the “Chevron Deference” that required justices to defer to the views of experts in federal agencies when ruling on the constitutionality of regulations, it became startling clear that Chief Justice John Roberts and his conservative majority were not just engaged in partisan dirty tricks, but were actually carrying out an unconstitutional power grab unheard of in our history.

Now, the majority of the U.S. Senate and the Biden administration have joined the fray, directly opposing the Court’s underlying motive to create absolute autonomy for itself. President Biden has proposed major Supreme Court reforms and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s No King’s Act is aimed at overturning the Court’s immunity decision. Both President Biden and Senator Schumer are reacting to the Supreme Court’s defiant opposition to any outside checks on its new godlike powers and on its dubious system of “ethics,” which allows justices to take gifts or bribes from partisan interests seeking their favor. 

In assigning itself supreme authority in deciding the immunity of presidential actions, and giving itself ultimate oversight in evaluating the validity of proposed regulations implementing federal laws, the Supreme Court has turned itself into an almost unassailably dominant branch of government.

Making the Court’s attempted coup even more unsettling is the potentially explosive issue of stripping legal penalties from violations of oaths of office. It’s not only illogical but grossly hypocritical to grant immunity to presidents who break their oath of office when conducting “official” business. Why have an oath of office if you can break it with impunity? That’s the whole point of taking the oath “on a stack of bibles.” An oath is an unbreakable boundary. 

It is a federal criminal offense for any official who has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution to advocate the overthrow of our constitutional government. The penalties for doing so include being removed from office, jail time or paying a fine. Every federal worker, elected or appointed, takes an oath to support the Constitution. The Constitution can only be legally altered through a joint resolution passed by two-thirds majority of the House of Representatives and the Senate. The proposed amendment is then submitted to the states for ratification. Three-fourths of the states, or 38 out of 50 states, must approve it. Any federal worker who proposes to alter the Constitution in any other way is violating their oath of office. There can be no immunity from penalty, as far as I can tell. Breaking an oath is morally and legally indefensible.

President Biden and Senate Majority Leader Schumer have responded to the Supreme Court’s power grab in the constitutional ways left open to them. Biden proposes a constitutional amendment invalidating presidential immunity for crimes committed in office. He wants Congress to set an 18-year term limit for justices, and proposes a code of conduct that prohibits the taking of bribes. Majority Leader Schumer’s No Kings Act would erase presidential immunity while making clear it is Congress, not the Supreme Court, that determines matters of federal criminal law.

It is appalling to think that the road to autocracy leads through a victory of the Republican Party this November. But everything indicates that it does, not only the threats of unconstitutional dictatorship coming from Trump, but now the corrupt power grab of the Supreme Court itself. The election of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her vice presidential running mate Tim Walz can be the only choice of those who value our form of constitutional government and the way of life it makes possible and protects.      

*Nullius in verba: take nobody’s word for it