Vitruvian Man by da Vinci, courtesy of wikipedia.org
My U. S. Senator voted against the Ukrainian-Istreal aid package that Congress passed recently. He said he opposed it because of Benjamin Netanyahu’s conduct in the Gaza war. I like my Senator. Nonetheless, I sent him an email that accused him of being long on principle, but short on common sense. The bill he rejected included aid for the people of Gaza, victims forced to live in tents under a barrage of bombs.
We live in an imperfect world, so life requires compromises. People with pollen allergies, for example, accept that bees need clover fields to survive.
Sometimes, imperfection can be a positive force. Donald Trump’s flawed presidency has taught us that our 235-year-old Constitution may do more than guarantee equality for all. If the Supreme Court upholds Trump’s claim of presidential immunity, it will mean our head of state is a monarch able to commit any crime without fear of consequences.
The High Court considered Presidential immunity concerning civil conduct three decards ago. A case in 1982 involving Richard Nixon ended with a decision that gave a sitting President a degree of absolution. The Constitution makes no mention of that, but the judges based their findings on the Speech or Debate section of the document. It grants civil immunity to members of Congress. Trump pushes the envelope when he argues that immunity extends to Presidential crimes.
If the integrity of some jurists deciding Trump’s case weren’t also in disrepute, all might be well. But the High Court has been slow to promulgate rules of conduct for itself and members like Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas have shown little inclination to police themselves.
A citizen may wonder how these appointed jurists came to hold their sweeping authority over the Executive and Legislative branches of government. Article 111 of the Constitution restricts them to disputes between the states or those arising among ambassadors and other high-ranking ministers.
Their expanded authority arose from Maybury v. Madison. In 1801, before leaving office, President John Adams commissioned William Maybury to be a justice of the peace. Adams’s successor, James Madison, refused to deliver the appointment, so Marbury sued. Taking the Federal government to court was novel, so before hearing the argument, the Supreme Court had to determine if it had jurisdiction.
Chief Justice John Marshall decided that Maybury’s petition raised a legal question, so the Court could rule. That opinion which was never challenged was far-reaching. The Constitution, being silent on the matter, Marshall and his cohorts chose to reserve for themselves extraordinary power over the two other branches of government.
Article 111 does offer a defense against an overreaching judiciary. Court-stripping permits Congress to limit or reduce a state court’s jurisdiction in federal matters except for those originally granted. The remedy poses complications that I’m not qualified to discuss. What matters is that besides Court-stripping, Congress has only one other way to assert its authority. It can write new legislation. If a bill fails, the judicial ruling stands.
Because the High Court chooses the cases it hears, its involvement can seem political. For example, when it overturned Roe v. Wade with its almost 50-year-old standing, members of the public were outraged and called for a change in that body’s composition, either by adding to the number of members or imposing term limits
Times of social and political upheaval can encourage extremism. Some people become heated enough to demand a scorched earth policy and let democracy be damned. Those of us standing in the middle watch in awe. Fortunately, enough of us exist to enforce the Golden Mean.
At once a mathematical and philosophical construct, the Golden Mean, which also exists in nature, calls for a middle way–living without the extremes of excess and deficiency. It teaches that compromise enables inclusion. In ancient thought, it defined a moral life.
When my Senator rejected aid for Gaza because the package was imperfect, he abandoned the middle way. He also forgot two important truths. First, he forgot that Israel is our ally and the only democracy in the Middle East. Its citizens deserve our support regardless of Netanyahu’s crimes. He will answer for his conduct in his country’s next election and, eventually, at the International Criminal Court in Haag.
Second, my Senator forgot that imperfection attends to every human endeavor. Purity is the posture of angels and those who imagine they are.
