George F. Will: Stopping a lawless president

Washington Post ^ | June 20, 2014 | George Will

[Cincinatus' Wife]

What philosopher Harvey Mansfield calls “taming the prince” — making executive power compatible with democracy’s abhorrence of arbitrary power — has been a perennial problem of modern politics. It is now more urgent in the United States than at any time since the Founders, having rebelled against George III’s unfettered exercise of “royal prerogative,” stipulated that presidents “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

Serious as are the policy disagreements roiling Washington, none is as important as the structural distortion threatening constitutional equilibrium. Institutional derangement driven by unchecked presidential aggrandizement did not begin with Barack Obama, but his offenses against the separation of powers have been egregious in quantity and qualitatively different.

[Albion Wilde]

The only people who win in court are the lawyers; everyone else loses.

Yes, that's the bottom line. Also it's the main problem with this lawyer-laden admin. If words were cards, they've built a tower of cards by now. Someone please yank one out of the bottom row.

[Lurking Libertarian]

Can Supreme Court justices be impeached, or is the only check on them the appointment process?

All federal judges can be impeached. One or two Supreme Court justices have been impeached, but none were ever convicted. Several lower court justices have been impeached and convicted.

Can a SCOTUS justice be arrested for criminal acts?

Yes.

[Lurking Libertarian]

Actually, only one SCOTUS justice has ever been impeached— Samuel Chase, in 1801, and he was acquitted.

[SoFloFreeper]

interesting read.

I especially like this oh-so-true section:

...Obama has suspended, waived and rewritten laws, including the Affordable Care Act. It required the employer mandate to begin this year. But Obama wrote a new law, giving to companies of a certain size a delay until 2016 and stipulating that other employers must certify they will not drop employees to avoid the mandate. Doing so would trigger criminal perjury charges; so he created a new crime, that of adopting a business practice he opposes.