THE GREATEST DANGER

One of the greatest dangers to our republic is the political corruption of our Judiciary, the third branch of government spelled out in our Constitution. 

The truth is our problem began in 1803, just 22 years after our founding document was confirmed by the colonies. In a case that first-year law students study the first week of the semester, Marbury v Madison, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote a decision in which he concluded that the courts had the power to invalidate statutes enacted by Congress and signed by the President.

For better or worse the concept, known as "judicial review," has prevailed to this day. It gives the Article III courts enormous power over the Article I legislature and the Article II executive.

Over the years we have seen the doctrine's benefits and deficits. Marbury was pure politics, a fight between John Adams' Federalists (now known as Republicans) and Thomas Jefferson's Republicans (now known as Democrats.) Nothing in the Constitution explicitly gave courts the power of judicial review, and, ironically the decision could not be justified under the notion of ""originality" espoused by the current Republican conservative members of the Supreme Court. 

One of the products of Marbury is the totally awful, and I believe totally dishonest decision by the current Supreme Court in Dobbs, which stripped away the rights of women to control their reproductive functions. 

Another example of the harm caused by the politicization of the judiciary is the ongoing brouhaha initiated by Trump-appointed District Judge Cannon in Florida, in respect of the documents (classified and non-classified) stolen by Donald Trump when he departed the White House in January 2021.

Major events in that case occur daily. If nothing else, the judge is consistent: her daily decisions are intellectually dishonest and a disgrace to our judiciary.Her rulings are every bit as dishonest as justice Alito's decision in Dobbs and further detracts from any respect formerly had for our courts.

But I digress. The real purpose of this post is to publish a link to an interview I gave recently in Jim Zirin's fascinating weekly show on the television station of the City University of New York. The subject of our talk covered the range of prosecutorial possibilities and problems respecting Donald Trump.

The interview will be broadcast on CUNYTV, which on Spectrum and Optimum can be found on channel 75 and on Verizon FiOS on channel 30. But the easiest way to get convenient access is to watch it on YouTube. Click here: link.

Seeing as how the interview occurred earlier this week, the Cannon rulings are ancient history by now, but the principles Jim and I discussed still prevail: we need to repair the judiciary, and we need to indict Donald Trump.

A bientôt.

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