Category: Law

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Equities and Ironies: Trump, Law & Politics

[Note to Readers:  In this era of wayward ‘truths,’ the field of play for irony has both spread and thickened.  Every now and then, it is worth noting the spawn of this fertile soil, for the record.]

Let’s begin with this one.  In the same week that a former US president is being tried in a criminal court for the first time in history–for the alleged crimes of falsifying business records in his effort to hide incriminating sexual evidence from his voters a scant few weeks before the 2016 presidential election–he is  fleecing these same voters with a new stock scam meant to support financially his deepening legal fees and his 2024 campaign to return to the White House. Continue reading “Equities and Ironies: Trump, Law & Politics”

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The US Supreme Court Cannibalizes Its Own Legitimacy

On February 28 the Supreme Court of the United States did what many legal experts thought  improbable:  it decided to consider Donald Trump’s arguments that American presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for any acts committed while they are in office.

That is, in effect, that presidents’ behaviors while in office are beyond the reach of our laws, that the Rule of Law–the bulwark of our democracy that asserts that laws apply equally to everyone without fear, favor, or position–is simply suspended for the most powerful individuals in the nation, that in fact presidents do enjoy the rank privileges of monarchs and despots.  The nation’s founding generation fought a war to ensure against this result.

One would think that the Court’s justices would cringe at such a notion, not least because it suggests that they themselves could be vulnerable to the punitive machinations of an angry president.  As the old boxing saying goes, protect yourselves at all times, men and women of the Court! Continue reading “The US Supreme Court Cannibalizes Its Own Legitimacy”

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Five Reasons Donald Trump Should Be Jailed Now

Now under three criminal indictments in as many jurisdictions, and likely soon a fourth, Donald Trump presents as an historic one-man crime wave.  Even more, since his two federal indictments–in Florida and in the District of Columbia–he has proven to be an ongoing serial offender despite all.  He continues open attacks on and threats to judges, prosecutors and potential witnesses despite a federal court order to not tamper with the legal process and its personnel, including potential witnesses.

What to do about the ceaseless criminality of a former American president?  One who continues to undermine the credibility and legitimacy of American law and law enforcement with his threatening intransigence?  During his “campaign” for the 2024 presidential election?  Legal experts say judges facing Trump’s trials and ongoing misconduct regarding them have few good options.  I believe they are wrong.  If the nation is to protect its law, order, and–most importantly–real justice, well, here are five reasons the federal judge in Washington should incarcerate him now, pending his trial on the charges of conspiring to overthrow the 2020 presidential election. Continue reading “Five Reasons Donald Trump Should Be Jailed Now”

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Notes on an Historic Indictment

Yesterday the U.S. Department of Justice indicted former president Donald J. Trump on four felony accounts associated with his attempts to overturn the legitimate 2020 presidential election.  After watching the various investigations into his misconduct play out through two impeachments and alleged crimes in both federal and state jurisdictions over the past few years, the following observations come to mind. Continue reading “Notes on an Historic Indictment”

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Can an American Political Party Commit Treason?

If recent political developments in the U.S. are any indication, the answer could appear to be yes.

Last week, the former president of the United States, Donald Trump, was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice on 37 felony counts for illegal retention of classified national defense documents and obstruction of justice.  The first 31 charges assert violations of the federal Espionage Act.

This week he was arraigned in the federal district court in Miami for the charges.  His taking of very sensitive national security documents when he left the White House in January 2021, and his attempts to hide many of them from the federal government’s efforts to retrieve them, constitute the most blatant political crimes against the nation’s security in American history. Continue reading “Can an American Political Party Commit Treason?”

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Mass Shootings and Insanity

Saturday, May 6, 2023, a mall in Allen, Texas:  eight dead, including children, and at least seven more injured.  In America we don’t need the headline above to know what happened there.  It is only the latest event in an epidemic, a plague of guns, a monsoon of bullets.

In just the past two weeks there have been mass shootings–defined as events in which at least four people are shot–in Cleveland, Texas (five killed), outside Tulsa, Oklahoma (six killed), and Atlanta, Georgia (one killed, four injured).  It is only spring, but already this year there have been at least 202 mass shootings, more than the number of days so far in 2023.  Last year, there were at least 647 of them.

Shootings are now the top cause of death of children and teens in the greatest nation on earth. Continue reading “Mass Shootings and Insanity”

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Thoughts on an Indictment

The first indictment of Donald Trump has landed.  Certainly there are more to come.  In the meanwhile, the indictment by the New York City grand jury and prosecutor has already created feverish media reactions and the expected bombast from the former U.S. president.  What to make of it all?  These thoughts come to mind.

The Media

In our digital age, the mainstream (traditional) media are also all about attracting eyeballs, most especially our television news programs.  Thus, the coverage to this point–before the indictment charges are even revealed–has been, well, hysterical.  It’s odd, isn’t it?  Trump refers to them as the “Fake News” media, and yet he is able to play them to his advantage like a fiddle.  They cannot get enough of him, his antics and his predicaments.  He is addicted to their attention, and they are happy to provide it. Continue reading “Thoughts on an Indictment”

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Is the Rule of Law a Chimera?

The term “chimera” has come to describe . . . anything composed of disparate parts or perceived as wildly imaginative, implausible, or dazzling.  Wikipedia

We are hearing about the Rule of Law quite a lot these days in the nation’s political dialogue.  I am wondering how the phrase is hitting the American ear.  Is it properly understood?  Is it considered important?  Why are we hearing it now only from one side of the political aisle?  Does it matter?  Does it exist?

The basic premise of the Rule of Law is easy to understand.  No one is above the law.  Everyone is equal under the law.  The law plays no favorites.  More dramatically, the Rule of Law is a sine qua non of democracy itself, of the people’s self-rule.  Without Law’s Rule, there can be no democratic form of government.  If any person or group is above the law, then by definition there is no democracy.  There is either autocracy or totalitarianism. Continue reading “Is the Rule of Law a Chimera?”

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Will the U.S. Prosecute the Former President for Insurrection and Other Crimes?

No doubt you have noticed the ongoing question of whether and when the U.S. Attorney General, Merrick Garland, will prosecute Donald Trump for alleged crimes he committed in the period leading up to the 2020 election and thereafter.  While the House of Representatives Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol has already publicized evidence of presidential crimes, the Attorney General has been silent on the status of investigations into the former president’s conduct regarding his effort to have the election of President Joe Biden overturned, which led to the insurrection at the nation’s capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.  Meanwhile, according to a poll released this week, almost 60 percent of Americans believe Trump should be prosecuted for crime in connection with the insurrection. Continue reading “Will the U.S. Prosecute the Former President for Insurrection and Other Crimes?”

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Whither the Supreme Court? Notes on Law, Abortion and Religion

For more than 30 years I taught the sociology of law to both undergraduate and graduate university students.  We considered how American law developed, how it was applied to persons and groups, and with what effects on them and on the broader society.

When discussing the U.S. Supreme Court, I emphasized that the traditional law school approach to its decision-making was wrong.  There, students have been commonly trained that legal reasoning is a learned skill much like that in scientific work.  It is based on principles of deduction, according to which judges make decisions about laws by logically figuring out how the principles established in earlier court decisions–precedents–apply to the current dispute before them.  In this perspective, judicial decision-making–especially in the higher courts with the best trained lawyers–is a matter of technique.  It produces the correct legal answers based on facts and reason, free of bias and personal belief.  Competent practitioners, therefore, should reach the same, right, answers.

Although the American legal establishment placed a lot of faith in this account, and asked the nation to do the same,  it was never a true story.

Of course, if it were, how could the Supreme Court issue so many decisions with 5-4 votes?  More dramatically now, how could it be that today’s Supreme Court appears to be little more than a radical Right redoubt, one on the verge of retracting a basic right finally granted to women by the Court almost 50 years ago? Continue reading “Whither the Supreme Court? Notes on Law, Abortion and Religion”

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