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The Choice [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-12-30
There comes a time in every democracy where the judicial system must choose between the Law and what's politically expedient, possibly even just in a few cases, but all too often pragmatic and certainly in contradiction with the Law.
There is a great film by Costa-Gavras entitled Special Section that tells how the Nazi-compliant Vichy government, seeking to appease the Germans, agreed to the execution of six French resistants, and set up a special tribunal just for that purpose, to find a legal way to rubberstamp de decision. That tribunal consisted of judges who were too ambitious, cowardly or inhuman to refuse such work.
The Chilean Supreme Court found a “legal” way to justify the atrocities of Pinochet's regime. So did the Spanish courts under Franco.
We are not at stage yet, thankfully, but when the Supreme Court will be faced very soon with the choice to interpret Article 14 of the Constitution and either disqualify Trump or not, we will have arrived at that moment in our history.
Personally, I would prefer a Biden/Trump contest because I think it safer for our side than a Biden/Haley (for example) contest, unless Trump also run as an independent and split the GOP, which he couldn’t do anyway if he is disqualified.
So while on a purely pragmatic, opportunistic level, I wouldn't be unhappy if SCOTUS decided Trump is qualified to run after all, it still would be a politically expedient decision, not a principled one, twisting or ignoring the Constitution, and at hat point, an all to clear sign that we no longer have a Constitution and that, in the future, everything goes.
The US will then no longer be exceptional in its respect for the Rule of Law; we'll just be another expedient country that ignores its laws when it's convenient to do so. And if that comes to pass, I shall shed a tear for my country.
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