America’s drift from republican to imperial law is not new, even if no one has so named it. Now — after the Supreme Court crashed out a spate of preposterously corrupt, end-of-term decisions — it is time.
Columns of the U.S. Supreme Court building. (Ron Coleman/Flickr/ CC BY-NC 2.0)
By Patrick Lawrence
Special to Consortium News
“The laws of a nation form the most instructive portion of its history.”
Let me share my emphatic agreement with this simple but profound assertion before I identify the citation. The law of any land, apart from its function as the basis of order and a given idea of justice, can be usefully read as a reflection of the values, purpose and priorities of said land and its inhabitants.
The same can be said of all sorts of social, economic and political institutions and practices. Regulatory regimes, tax regimes, electoral systems, welfare systems, school systems: Whatever their actual use and however they work, these are cultural artifacts. You discover who people are and what matters to them as you learn to read into how they manage themselves. It is not a complicated thought. I figured this out during my years as a correspondent in faraway places.
O.K. “The laws of a nation form…” This is Edward Gibbon in Chapter 44 of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, his famous discourse on jurisprudence from the formation of the republic to Rome’s descent into tyranny and empire during the reign of Augustus, the 41 years from 27 B.C.E. to 14 C.E.
It is time now to consider Gibbon’s thought as it obtains in the America of the 21st century. I am prompted to this conclusion by the recent session of the Supreme Court, a hyper-charged spectacle of ideological fervor that seemed at times to veer toward pandemonium. The United States has been running an empire, ever more aggressively and obviously, more or less since the 1945 victories. Ever more aggressively and obviously, the nation’s judicial system comes to serve an imperium rather than a republic.
This was the message the Court had for Americans, via a series of preposterously corrupt decisions, a number of them openly unconstitutional, as it concluded its annual session on June 30.
There is no surprise here, or shouldn’t be. W.E.B. Du Bois, the historian and social critic, was among the first to dismiss the prevalent assumption — this was in 1935, in his Black Reconstruction in America — that America could stay true to its democratic ideals while aggrandizing itself as a potent global power. Du Bois considered this “the cant of exceptionalism,” in the useful phrase of David Levering Lewis, his biographer.
No, the only surprise as the Court crashed out a spate of end-of-term decisions is how brazenly it broke the laws and precedents it is supposed to uphold. It was saving the best for last, you see.
The Court handed down all sorts of decisions on questions of greater or lesser importance — gun rights, the rights of transgender athletes, the death penalty, religious freedoms — that do not bear directly on the character of the judicial system and what purpose it serves. It is the judgments that shifted American law so dramatically from democratic to un– that call to mind Gibbons’s observation.
The two most offensive of these concern presidential power and the place of money in American elections. In the latter case — brought by none other than J.D. Vance four years ago — the Court lifted the limits on direct spending on political campaigns. This is the old money-as-speech charade, extending the fateful Citizens United decision of 2010. Never mind there is rarely any talk of campaign finance anymore. The phrase seems almost quaint.
Executive Power
A gift for the U.S. president before a Freedom 250 Grand Prix Showcase on West Executive Avenue at the White House on Monday. (White House/Fllickr/Daniel Torok)
The ruling on executive power gives the president the authority to fire those running regulatory agencies — two dozen or so — with or without cause and for whatever reason or none. Out the window now with the independence of government officials who have heretofore been constitutionally protected from political pressure.
At issue here is the separation of powers — a founding principle, of course — a 112–year-old law limiting presidential prerogative on these questions, and a 1935 Supreme Court ruling reaffirming this law in a specific case in point.
Just what America needs with Donald J. Trump in the White House.
“Today this Court undoes centuries of political practice and concludes that all three branches of government have been acting in open defiance of the Constitution all this time,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissenting opinion she read, unusually, straight from the bench. “The one thing that does appear to be clear going forward is that chaos will follow.”
Other rulings, among numerous: Those kindly people at Homeland Security will now refuse entry to those seeking asylum in the United States without even a hearing to determine their status. Nothing for these people: It is summary justice from here on out. In keeping with the Trump regime’s Draconian campaign against immigrants, Haitian and Syrian migrants, who number well into six figures, will now be subject to deportation even if they are in the United States legally.
Empty Form & Popular Delusion
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Removal (ICE) agents during an operation in Los Angeles in June 2025. (DHS /Tia Dufour)
These last two decisions prompted outrage from Sonia Sotomayor and her liberal colleagues on the bench, including gasps in the gallery and, I am reading, “primal screams” and “incandescent anger.” All to be understood. Taken together with the radical expansion of executive power and the stripping away of what remained of limits on money in politics, these decisions fundamentally change what Americans (or anyone else) mean when they refer to “America.”
These were all or mostly 6–3 decisions, the Trump-subservient majority carrying the session against the three liberal justices. The Court ruled against Trump’s interests and preferences in a couple of cases, which I read as cover for the Court’s evident allegiance to the Trump agenda. Restricted voting rights, the rampant gerrymandering to the advantage of reactionaries: It is all there. Arthur Schlesinger published The Imperial Presidency (Houghton Mifflin, 1973) during the late-Nixon years. That era seems not quite benign but nearly, given the docket the Supreme Court just ruled upon.
As Dorothy famously told her dog as they came upon the Land of Oz, “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
Gibbon is superb on the diabolic craft with which Augustus transformed republican law into the law of imperial tyranny. He understood, as Gibbon did, people’s givenness to delusion and their common need to think they still had what had been taken from them.
Augustus’ method rested on careful nomenclature, the naming of things so as to mislead. Let the assemblies continue to assemble, let the Senate remain the Senate, but only as empty form, for empty form will be enough to satisfy the popular need for delusion. In an exceptional turn of political spectacle, Augustus bowed to the Senate, which then voted to approve his dictatorial authority. “With its power,” as Gibbon neatly sums this up, “the Senate had lost its dignity.”
Here is the English historian in a nicely clarifying passage from Chapter 3, his account of Augustus’ rise to power:
“Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his expectation that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom.”
Brilliant — and pertinent if you ask me. And in a nearby passage that seems à propos in the Age of Trump:
“It was dangerous to trust the sincerity of Augustus; to seem to distrust it was still more dangerous.”
When a nation’s judicial system gives way to corruption or ideology or simply power, I have long argued, it stands at the precipice of failed-state status. I saw this in the course of my correspondent years. It holds as a truth. It is the American condition as I read it. America’s drift from republican law to imperial law is not new, even if no one has so named it. Now it is time.
Let us refuse the temptations of self-delusion and get our nomenclature right. America is a lot less democratic now and a lot more imperial than it was before the Supreme Court finished its yearly business on June 30. Is this to be counted anything other than a failure whose magnitude is hard to overstate?
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, lecturer and author, most recently of Journalists and Their Shadows, available from Clarity Press or via Amazon. Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been restored after years of being permanently censored.
TO MY READERS. Independent publications and those who write for them reach a moment that is difficult and full of promise all at once. On one hand, we assume ever greater responsibilities in the face of mainstream media’s mounting derelictions. On the other, we have found no sustaining revenue model and so must turn directly to our readers for support. I am committed to independent journalism for the duration: I see no other future for American media. But the path grows steeper, and as it does I need your help. This grows urgent now. In recognition of the commitment to independent journalism, please subscribe to The Floutist, or via my Patreon account.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Please Donate to
CN’s Summer
Fund Drive!
There is a clause in the Constitution which states that federal judges’ service is contingent upon “good behavior.” If a Supreme Court justice voting in a manner that flagrantly violates the U.S. Constitution isn’t “bad behavior,” I’d like to know what is? It’s way past time for Congress to do it’s job and remove 6 SCOTUS justices just as soon as they can impeach Trump, Vance and depose Johnson as Speaker so that the next batch won’t be worse. That would make expanding the Court superfluous, though I’m all in favor of term (and age!) limits as well.
How can they be “voting in a manner that flagrantly violates the US constitution” when their literal job is to ascertain exactly what the constitution means??
Interpretation of the Constitution is one piece per decision, which must accord with precedent, and Congress may exercise checks and balances by determining a flagrant violation. The Judicial branch set up the “Judicial Conference” (itself) to judge itself, in violation of the Constitution. Congress can remove them under the Constitution, and fails to do so because both branches serve partisan paymasters for personal gain.
Because the federal branches have distinct functions, Checks and Balances have never worked: such a design is like an aircraft engineer claiming that it doesn’t matter if the wings fall off because we can always rely on the landing gear: it doesn’t work that way. Like aircraft autopilots, Checks and Balances must operate between redundant divisions of each major system (such as a federal branch). But Congress could enact removal of federal judges by legislation.
No, interpretation of the constitution by the SC need not “accord with precedent” … it need only acknowledge precedent and then reason why the precedent was incorrectly applied. Otherwise, many egregious previous cases would still be precedent …
You may disagree with the current court’s decisions … this does not make what they are doing unconstitutional and subject to extraordinary measures by the other branches of govt.
Some truth there, Caliman, but in fact Congress can remove judges under the Constitutional condition of failure of “good behavior” which is quite broad and discretionary.
The empires new clothes is immorality.
After a couple of hundred years the Roman Republic’s Senate, the oligarchs of that time, decided it was just too much trouble to govern. They longed to return to their landed estates where life was good, surrounded by slaves, women, family and food, so they turned the power over to Augustus. It’s ironic that we are also a couple of hundred years into our republic and we have a guy who wants to be Caesar saying, “you won’t ever have to vote again”. Whoopee.
TY, Patrick Lawrence & “Shout-Out” to the Readership, who “get” this! TY.
…..*“In the end, the thesis put forth in The New Jerusalem. In fact, according to the Zionist themselves, the concept that America is the New Jerusalem is the very foundation of Zionism in the 21st century,” i.e., Diplomacy is Dead! We negotiate w/Bombs! “The Dept of War’s” Foreign & Domestic policy is “Kill, first. Think, later;” and, U.S. POTUS’ 42-47 “live free” fm accountability, behind $ecurity rich, gated communities; &, the U.S. Congress is M.I.A. Hence, Zionists’ power LIVES LARGE in America!!!
… *“Myths hover over institutions that still seem to hold together” i.e., The Church,.” 1) Our Lady of Guadalupe, aka La Virgen de Guadalupe aka La Virgen Morena, is a Catholic title of the Blessed Virgin Mary” aka “MARY” “was a first-century Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Joseph & the mother of Jesus The Savior.” The owl asks, “Who planted that seed?” The bird tweets, “God only knows. Itsa mystery w/history aka his story.”
Yes, *Annette Morgan, “People have always been drawn to believe things that are absurd or clearly untrue,” i.e., 1) the black man groomed to be POTUS $old HOPE (Hell On POTUS’ Earth); &, “CHANGE.” Clearly, he believed in “Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em!” Consequently, BHO’s presidency ended in disaster w/war everywhere. IMO, gifting “the world” his legacy, deception, destruction, death; AND, the first inauguration of DJTrump.
Absophknlutely, *Annette Morgan, *“The failures of our systems, the misuse of power, and the spread of illusion must be seen clearly, without fear and without exaggeration.” Consequently, “confusion wanders in. Strides the evening like a king. Chaos and turmoil prevail. Bedlam reigns. “HOPE” is drowned. As, but strangely we settle down. Resigned to the sinking ship on which we sail!!!”
…. Trump’s Reflecting Pool, drained for the umpteenth time, to repair damage done & dusted, by vandals, thugs, the Beasts of D.C. Inphkndeed, the empty pool reflects “the big, fat, bloody, f/burnt-orange, 20,000 lb. Beast’s footprint aka DJ Trump’s Tire Tracks, BIGLY!!! Take that to court!!!
“Yes, of course, at times you want to scream at politicians who seem like dead men walking, but dead men walking not because death is awaiting them at the next corner, it’s just because they seem empty of life, empty of humanity. But, what else do you need to see, whatever you want to call it? But what else does Israel need to do and say for you to take measures, for you to take international law seriously and do it because by letting Israel ravage the realm of international law with impunity, you are also destroying the foundations of the international legal system.” FRANCESCA ALBANESE, @ hxxps://consortiumnews.com/2026/07/10/hedges-report-when-the-world-sleeps/
*Babylon” by David Gray
* Alice Bailey/Annette Morgan @ COMMENTS, “TY, for your insight, clarity, & positive position, “Never Say Die!” Keep it Lit!
The national government has three branches. Which among them do these regulatory agencies report?
A great question … they report to none, apparently, in the author’s preferred democratic republic.
Congress.
Before the Court’s rulings, Congress.
After, to the President.
The Court essentially said that Congress cannot create independent bodies within the Executive branch. Anything within the Executive serves “at the pleasure of the President” as the saying goes.
So let it be written. So let it be done.
But Congress was never in day to day charge of the agencies … they simply don’t have the staffing for that. So the answer is that no one was in charge. The agencies ran themselves under their interpretation of what the law meant and then Congress would course correct through further legislation, a very rough and unworkable management system. Technocracy.
Well and courageously stated by Patrick Lawrence. The judiciary are with rare exceptions partisan operatives, inventing any perjury of fact and law to rationalize party policies serving bribe sources, for personal career gains. No democracy can permit economic influence upon government or mass media beyond limited registered personal donations: our western pseudo-democracies are veils for partisan gangs, structures of subversion of our constitutions by economic warfare that qualifies as treason.
The federal judiciary, executive branch, and Congress are no longer more than puppets of money power, and violate all aspects of the Constitution and laws to satisfy the bribe sources of their corrupt political parties, while sonorously declaring loyalty thereto whenever that serves the same paymasters. FISA judge Boasberg granted about 1000 warrants with zero evidence and was promoted for that to the DC district court, which in the recent case Barth v. DOJ actually declared that any US agency may engage in racketeering to steal public funds for a political party, at their Discretion (!) and with full Immunity (!) if convicted. The Supreme Corruption could not be bothered to review the case. All Republican judges.
The US public sees only Santa Claus in solemn robes, their ultimate protector and saviour, and cannot tolerate the insecurity and bother of entertaining evidence of judicial corruption. If proven, most only look for opportunities to profit by declaring loyalty to the corrupt party. These are fruits of a society that values only material aggrandizement.
Correction requires (1) amendments to the Constitution restricting political spending to limited and registered individual contributions, with (2) similar isolation of mass media from economic power, and (3) Checks and Balances must be implemented within each federal branch: it does not work between branches with different powers. That will never be passed by our corrupt Congress, and would be ignored by our corrupt judicial and executive branches. There is nothing left of US democratic institutions but a cloak for flag-waving and scripture-thumping criminals and tyrants.
Not “gangs” – cartels!
All Hail Patrick Lawrence for giving name and substantive reasoning to a fateful historical occasion.
A proper question may well be: Which shall ‘We the People’ choose, the liberty or death of our Republic?
The need to believe in absurdies or what is demonstrably untrue is a perennial feature of human beings. Once, for the more privileged, the American Myth was supplemental to something resembling a functional democracy. Now, the dreamy vapours of America’s ‘values’ and ‘democratic principles’ settle over a rapidly forming police state. An ostensible democracy, queasily mimicking the state terror of Guatemala or Chilé in the 1970’s with increasing fervour – if revolutionary resistance doesn’t intervene. But, ultimately, it doesn’t matter what delusions some may harbour if the immigrant detention centres sprouting across The Land Of The Free like fresh tumours begin swallowing up ‘dissidents’ as well.
Yeah, that’s my prediction too. That or dead.
People have always been drawn to believe things that are absurd or clearly untrue. Myths hover over institutions that still seem to hold together. Today, they drift over systems that are plainly breaking down, especially in the United States, acting more like a thin veil over a tightening security state. These patterns are appearing in many places, each in its own way. And in some places, the movement appears different.
Clearly in Syria, signs of deeper reconstruction are emerging with a consistency and a remarkable strength that cannot be ignored.
From a wider human perspective, this surfacing of distortion is not only expected — it is necessary. As Alice Bailey wrote in Problems of Humanity, the forces that block right human relations must come into full view before they can be released. Humanity cannot choose the good while the nature of the bad remains hidden. The failures of our systems, the misuse of power, and the spread of illusion must be seen clearly, without fear and without exaggeration.
We are living in a moment when choices matter. Those who hold truth, clarity, and human goodness as the way forward are being asked to stand in that recognition. The turmoil itself is a sign that the old forms are cracking, and everything that obstructs right human relations is rising into visibility.
Humanity is being forced to choose between clarity and illusion, goodwill and separateness, truth and propaganda.
At this point in history, I suggest that we have reached the actual point where “the center no longer holds.”
Lawrence tells us the last step in this process. The corruption of laws.
First was a corruption of democracy. Step 1: Make candidates serve a party, not and electorate. Step 2: Control the party using money.
It doesn’t matter who you vote for when all the candidates are chosen by those who have taken over your fake democracy.
There exists a well established resource for viewing candidates for office: TrackAIPAC.org
They tell you who accepts AIPAC bribes and their subsidiaries or dark money donors AIPAC uses to hide their finger prints on the donation.
Hmmm, not sure whether the SC has enabled empire or whether they have clarified what we have always had … in other words, shown the practical implications of the US constitution married to excessive governance centralization in DC. Perhaps what we need is more federalism?
As for:
“Out the window now with the independence of government officials who have heretofore been constitutionally protected from political pressure.”
So, did the author actually prefer the Deep State we had previously running matters? Heads of agencies like the EPA etc. not beholden or controlled by an elected president (who is after all the chief executive) and instead deciding on their own the meaning of laws? A technocracy rather than a democracy?
The president is elected by the people and can be changed next election. An unelected and unaccountable technocracy deciding the practical application of laws is the opposite of democracy.
When George W. Bush received scientific reports from the EPA and other agencies, he simply redacted the parts he didn’t like. Of course, he did have a “faith-based” office being run on tax-payer money inside his administration. Maybe the Supreme Court will rule next on the idea of “drowning” as ultimate proof of innocence or guilt in the one standing trial.
Hmm. The president is not elected by the people. He is elected by the electoral college. In my long life, I have never voted for the president of the usa. I have voted for the electors of the state in which I was living at the time. These electors elect the president.
The constitution of the usa was written for, and adopted by, the rich who reserved ordinary political power for a posterity that was to be, in all possible ways, rich, white men like themselves. The supreme court has come to serve that special interest. Hmm…