BACKGROUND
1)Paul Rosenzweig”The Biggest Test for the Supreme Court Yet; It is no exaggeration to say that the future of checks and balances hinges on what the Court does in the tariffs case:”The Atlantic, September 4,2025 (10:48am ET).
“What’s the point,” a writer may ask himself, “when no one in government is listening to reason?”
It is easy to get discouraged when the entire U.S. government, the entire Republican Party, and half the voters in the country seem to be hell-bent on violating every Constitutional norm and law in order to destroy our democracy.
It is easy for those who believe in the Constitution and the Rule of Law to get discouraged when the Supreme Court has been captured by right-wing zealots who dismantle one Constitutional protection after another.
The Supreme Court, in fact, has led the charge to put an all-powerful would-be dictator on the king’s throne he so obviously covets.
Look at the decisions.
In Trump v. Anderson (2024) the Supreme Court ignored Section 3 of the 14th Amendment,1 which was crystal clear. The Court in effect wrote out of the Constitution the norm providing that no one who, having sworn to uphold the Constitution as a public official, had participated in a rebellion or insurrection against the United States, could hold office under the United States or any State. In the opinion of most experts and even leading conservative judges like Michael Luttig, Section 3 barred Trump from becoming president. The Supreme Court held that it did not.
In Trump v. United States (2024), the Court held that the President could not be criminally prosecuted for his official actions while in office—whatever that means, to be determined by a rogue Supreme Court at some point in the future.
The Republicans have also put in place a number of judges who appear ready to uphold the Trump Administration’s actions, no matter what the facts or the law.
It is easy for those who believe in the U.N. Charter and international law, including international humanitarian law and international human rights law, to become discouraged when they see their President and government acting as active accomplices to Israel’s crimes against humanity and apparent genocide in Gaza.
It is easy for these same defenders of international law to get discouraged when they see the U.S. President acting at every turn in support of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression and barbarism in Ukraine.
For students of history it is even easier to get discouraged by these developments, because they understand where similar policies have led to in the past.
Above all, it is easy to become discouraged when one realizes that the foreign policy of the United States is being led by stupid and delusional men, who have no regard for law and little regard for reason.2
What is to be done in such a discouraging situation?
I have only two overriding thoughts.
First, the Democrats need to launch a drive to expand the membership of the Supreme Court, so that one day the atrocious decisions in Anderson v. Trump and Trump v. United States can be reversed.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, it should be noted, applies to all officials who swore to uphold the Constitution and then participated in a rebellion or insurrection against the United States. Challengers of Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) and other insurrectionists should challenge them in court the next time they run for election. The Supreme Court’s sophistry in Anderson v.Trump may not apply to them.
History offers important lessons. In the 1930’s the Supreme Court overthrew much of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation. Roosevelt then launched a very serious campaign to expand the membership of the Court. Curiously, the Court began to uphold more of FDR’s legislation.
The time to launch such a campaign to expand the Court is now. It could help persuade the Court not to reverse the decisions of the U.S. Court of International Trade and the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit holding Trump’s tariffs illegal and unconstitutional. Should the Court reverse those decisions it would give Trump virtually unlimited power to ignore the law.
Such a decision would be the equivalent of the “Enabling Act” approved by the German Reichstag on March 23, 1933, which gave Adolf Hitler unlimited dictatorial powers.3
Second, Democrats and all little “d” democrats need to mount a campaign to impeach and remove Donald Trump from office. They need to develop a powerful impeachment narrative, and then to repeat it constantly until every citizen in the country gets the message.
This will take time. They need to start today
What’s the point of writing in such discouraging times?
The best response is probably provided by Albert Camus in his novel, The Plague.4
We must write because we cannot accept the Israeli starvation of children and others in Gaza.
We must write because we cannot accept the war crimes of Israelis who have killed 60,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children.
We must write because we cannot accept Russian aggression and barbarism in Ukraine. We cannot accept the kidnapping and removal to Russia of over 20,000 Ukrainian children. Some estimates now put the figure at 35,000 children.
We must write because we cannot accept the dismantlement of the United Nations Charter which prohibits aggression, and the abandonment of international human rights law and international humanitarian law (the law of war).
We must write because we understand the horrors international law seeks to prevent, and we cannot accept that humanity has given up on protecting the rights of individuals, and the liberty and freedom of peoples everywhere.
We refuse to accept the triumph of Evil, no matter how discouraging the current situation may appear to be.
In addition to Camus, William Faulkner in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature, on December 10, 1950, offered the following memorable words of advice:5
I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.
Constitution, 14th Amendment, Section 3.
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
See, James Rowles, “Trump's plans for Gaza,” Trenchant Observations, September 4,2025.
See James Rowles, “Trump’s illegal use of emergency powers to circumvent the Constitution and the law; Compare: The German "Enabling Act" of March 23, 1933 which gave Adolf Hitler dictatorial powers and ended German Democracy, Trenchant Observations, April 12, 2025.
Albert Camus, La Peste, (Paris: Gallimard, 1947); Albert Camus, The Plague, English translation (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1948).
William Faulkner, “Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech (Literature), Stockholm, December 10, 1950.
***
James Rowles is a former Lecturer on Law at Harv Law School and professor of international law at other universities.
He studied the history of Nazi Germany at Stanford, and has studied and worked on human rights, judicial reform, and access to justice projects in many countries in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and in Afghanistan and Russia. At Harvard Law School, he taught a course on “Law, Human Rights, and the Struggle for Democracy in Latin America”.
At the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the OAS, he worked on human rights cases involving forced disappearances, executions, and torture in a number of authoritarian countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Recent Books by the Author
James P. Rowles, The Rape of American Democracy: Republican Actions and Democratic Failures, 2016-2021 (2024). Available on Amazon, and from IngramSpark by clicking on a link here.
James P. Rowles, Don’t Be Stupid. Pay Attention, Damn It! Advice for Undecided Voters and Voters Leaning Toward Trump (2024). Available on Amazon,and from IngramSpark by clicking on a link here.
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