“It’s time for us to take absolute responsibility for our democracy: if you have a democracy, you need to be engaged and involved.” —Mark Fischler
Criminal justice professor and constitutional law expert Mark Fischler does a brilliant job of deepening our understanding of the challenges facing our democracy, our legal system, and our public morality. How did the democratic process and the values it represents — equality and liberty for all — come to be teetering on the brink? Mark illuminates the fact that the Constitution is not a set-in-stone document, but eminently open to interpretation, and explains that its interpretation is a direct reflection of the worldviews of the Supreme Court justices. In fact, the whole process of democracy needs to be aligned with a certain level of development in order to deliver. Mark points out that democracy hasn’t served all of us, and urges us to explore who and in what ways it has failed, that we may work to correct its flaws and continue to uphold and expand the values foundational to democracy to include respecting and protecting the rights of all beings.
Mark contrasts the moral integrity of revered public figures such as Socrates and Dr. King, who honored the rule of law despite that it went against their own self interest, with the disregard for the law so prevalent among political figures today, and points out that democracy can be subverted not only by malicious intent, but also by misplaced idealism—when people feel that supporting a charismatic leader or ideology is more important than supporting the principles of democracy. With regard to the Trump trials, the question arises, is any human above the law? Mark also shares where he finds hope—in his own university students with their openness to a deeper ethical understanding and responsibility and willingness to undertake civic action. Mark urges all of us who care about democracy to become engaged now. His wise, integral, highly informed insights about the current state of the legal system and of democracy, here and around the world, are revelatory, alarming, and inspiring in turn.
During the last 20 years i found 1984 a very quotable book.
More recently God Emperor of Dune quotes are coming to mind more often.
We have slaughtered virtually all our civilization’s sacred cows. Why would the sacred cow of “law” be spared?
Ill revisit the idea that progress toward Integral is not linear but more cylic. We have probably had Integral Civilizations before but in our hubris belive that no, we are the pinnacle of himan civilization and going backwards is impossible. 10,000 years into the future a new civilization may believe the same and “Washington” may be as mythical as Atlantis or Lemuria.
I imagine Mark is appalled at what the Supreme Court has done to the rule of law. RIP American democracy. Actually, I have a radical idea for saving it. The Supreme Court has just made the President of the US a king without using the term. The ruling was made with Trump in mind, but guess what? Joe Biden is president and the immunity ruling applies to him…right now. He should use his absolute power just one time to overturn the SCOTUS’s ruling and restore the rule of law. Here’s how: he asks for a personal audience with John Roberts and presents him with a memo, written on White House stationery (that makes it official business), that says he, Joe Biden, is offering the Court a choice: either reverse the ruling or he will order the six conservative justices to be removed from the bench, to be replaced by judges who can be counted on to render judgments in accordance with the Constitution. Alternatively, he could pack the court (by-passing the Senate) with 4 or more liberal judges to give the Court a 7-6 or greater liberal majority who could proceed to undo the massive amount of damage wrought by the current illegitimate and corrupt majority.
I think there’s a lot of hope in the future. If you study political cycles and the American experience, you will see three steps forward and two steps back. It is absolutely true that the Supreme Court is made up of human being who have certain predisposed dispositions and interpret the law that way. In Trump vs. the United States the president is an allowed full immunity because of the wording. “…all presidents have absolute criminal immunity for official acts under core constitutional powers, presumptive immunity for other official acts, and no immunity for unofficial acts.”
What will be of interest is how the Supreme Court will ultimately define “core responsibilities” in the future. Everything else will be presumptive, which means the president can and would be responsible for his/ her actions. If the Supreme Court Justice is like Roger Tawny or the Social Darwinist justices during the Gilded Age it will be a very narrow definition because of the belief that the president shouldn’t have too much power. If it’s somebody like John Marshall or Earl Warren, core responsibilities will be very wide because they believed in a more activist national government.
Because of the way the system is set up if one Supreme Court Justice defines responsibilities one way, another one down the road will redefine responsibilities another way. It’s a crazy mixed up world but the founding brothers knew that and so far the experiment continues to move ahead if you believe in equality for all.