Judge Luttig on the Supreme Court’s Enabling of Trump’s Lawlessness
Judge Michael Luttig wrote an important article published today in the Atlantic magazine entitled “The End of Rule of Law in America.”
In it, Judge Luttig provides a scathing, extended criticism of President Trump, of whom he says “is not a man who respects the rule of law, nor one who seeks to understand it.”
Judge Luttig explains that Trump's presidency to date "has been a reign of lawless aggression by a tyrannical wannabe king, a rampage of presidential lawlessness in which Trump has proudly wielded the powers of the office and the federal government to persecute his enemies.” He concludes that “in the first few months of his second administration, Trump has proved himself an existential threat to the rule of law in America.”
Judge Luttig’s analysis and proof are overwhelming. Many of us have been making similar points but coming from a man of unimpeachable conservative credentials and judicial prominence, the words ring home with special force.
The article stands as a signal event in the intellectual history of the appalling Trump second presidency
I previously had an hour-long interview with Judge Luttig at the Texas Tribune festival last September. Our discussion centered on his view of grievous mistakes that the Supreme Court had made that had enabled Trump’s tyranny in the first term. However, it overall sounds the same themes of Trump's lawlessness and contempt for constitutional rule. Please find it below.
Talk to you later.
It became more apparent that something really bad was afoot when the court made the Citizens United ruling. The republicans had stirred the pot just before the passage of the ACA and McConnell kept the pot boiling all during the two Obama terms. To my legally untrained mind, the Roberts court is as complicit as Mitch McConnell was in not seeing 45 impeached. Its delays and subsequent rulings during Jack Smith’s investigations only to be topped off with its egregious immunity ruling sealed Roberts court’s contributions to 45’s return to power. By so doing, they have now been rendered impotent as an effective part of our erstwhile government.
It is a powerful article