Indeed, what Lewis describes in the British context is relative to the Monarchy, its ministers and Parliament who in theory have Authority, as the Sovereign or his representative, to cast aside English Common Law.
In the American context what he describes is a strong call for the Limited government of the Constitution and the Founding Fathers, a government enabled by the Law that created it to only address certain things and NOTHING more.
People miss that the American Constitution is an enabling act and as such is different than written constitutions that define the departments of government and broadly outlines their responsibilities. The Constitution enumerates not attributes and responsibilities but attributes and Powers, reserving the balance of all other potential powers to others besides the federal. Responsibilities are inferred from the few Powers enumerated.
Lewis might not have realized the reason why he mistrusts men with power would have utterly disqualified even early American progressives from ever holding office if people always thought clearly. Even then it took the pernicious influence of those early progressives, the co-opting of the natural and proper loyalties to the States for the federal government, to even make possible FDR and company throwing the Constitution to the curb ...and even THEN they had yet to be taken over by the very people that anticommunists and antifascists alike had been warning us of.
Of all Presidents who have ever been, the only reason I don’t rank LBJ as the most corrupt is that as bad as he was he still an American crook ... I just cannot imagine him crassly selling us out for personal gain, the whole country, as the Clintons and Obama did.
Aside: LBJ was a bit like that one D.C. - Marvel crossover where the Joker learns that Red Skull isn’t just a persona assumed, that he really was a Nazi, and what is easily the most murderous and capricious villain in all of comics announces that he’s about to pound the Skull into the pavement because, psycho he may be, he’s an AMERICAN psycho.
I could see Joker — that Joker from the crossover — if he were real, confiding in Batman that once he knew what Hillary was really like and how she’d sell us out he ended up stuffing ballot boxes for Trump ... and he just can’t forgive her that she made him try to steal an election for any Republican. Then he’d put on a MAGA hat and confess through tears he feels like he’s somehow betrayed FDR even then.
Bookmark for Joker v. Red Skull. Never heard of that one before. Also to remind myself to investigate CSLewis some more.