Many Americans Are Thinking— Or Should Be— About What Happens When The System Fails

"The Last Act" by Nancy Ohanian

The Rule of Law Doesn’t Come With Any Automatic Guarantees

About a month ago, Ivy Vega wrote that MAGA had turned on Amy Coney Barrett— at one time “hailed as the judicial crown jewel of the conservative movement— because she ruled against a Trump deportation initiative. The far right began referring to her as “a backstabber, a sellout... even a communist.”

This week, Chief Justice John Roberts, a lifelong, very partisan conservative, “described the rule of law as ‘endangered’ and warned against ‘trashing the justices,’ but speaking in Washington Monday he didn’t point fingers directly at Trump or his allies for publicly excoriating judges who’ve ruled against aspects of Trump’s agenda. ‘The notion that rule of law governs is the basic proposition,’ Roberts said during an appearance at Georgetown Law. ‘Certainly as a matter of theory, but also as a matter of practice, we need to stop and reflect every now and then how rare that is, certainly rare throughout history, and rare in the world today.’… As many legal experts express grave concern about Trump’s attacks on law firms and with several federal judges advancing inquiries into whether the administration is refusing to comply with court orders, Roberts took a longer-term view Monday. He blamed schools for shortchanging civics education and leaving students with little understanding of the structure of U.S. government or the role of the courts. ‘That’s really too bad,’ the chief justice told graduating students at the law school. ‘We’re developing a situation where a whole group of young people is growing up having no real sense about how our system of justice works.’”

Constitutional scholar Jamie Raskin (D-MD) isn’t one of them and during an interview with Greg Sargent he talked about “why Trump’s acceptance of a $400 million luxury jet from Qatar is an ‘outrageous’ abuse of the Constitution.

“Every other president in U.S. history,” he said, “has come to Congress with far smaller things than this. Some of them have even come on things that are nonmonetary in nature, like when President Kennedy was offered Irish citizenship and then declined to do that after getting advice not to do it. Or remember, Obama refused to accept $1 million that went with the Nobel peace prize. But Donald Trump is in a class by himself, and he’s talking about pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of goods and services. And you don’t have to wonder why some of his friends on the Supreme Court, like Clarence Thomas, have the idea that they’re entitled to take whatever they want from their billionaire sugar daddies… [E]verybody understands that the corruption lies at the heart of this authoritarian assault on our institutions. The Trump family has made more than $1 billion a month since the new administration began. The crypto is now a majority of what they’re doing. I think the jet plane is a very concrete and vivid demonstration of what’s going on. And when people get that, then we will be able to explain the more complicated arrangement of how they’re using crypto also to funnel money from you name it— foreign states and governments and royals and potentially criminal organizations, people who are supplicants, people who seeking different kinds of favor from the administration— right through to the president’s pockets. And that’s how this crypto scam is working… Either the government is going to be an instrument for the common good of everybody and it will control the rapaciousness of the people at the top— or alternatively it’s going to be an instrument for the wealthiest and most powerful people, like Donald Trump and Elon Musk, and they will plunder the rest of society and they will ruin the achievements of American democracy like Medicaid and Social Security. So I think people will understand that. Is this going to be a government for the few or a government for the many?”

In response to a question from Sargent about the escalating lawbreaking by the Trump regime, he said “we need to be identifying lawbreaking as it happens— both ordinary statutory crimes and high crimes and misdemeanors. We need to be specifying what’s going on so people understand the implications of that. And that’s just important for the rule of law. Obviously, Donald Trump is somebody who is perfectly willing to use the pardon power to pardon people who break the law for him. We saw that with the January 6 rioters and insurrectionists. Nonetheless, we have to uphold the rule of law so people understand what’s taking place.”

As many legal experts have warned, the fantasy that Trump and his regime will ever be held meaningfully accountable is becoming harder to sustain. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing— from the attempted coup on January 6 to brazen violations of the Emoluments Clause— Trump has not only evaded justice but has grown more emboldened. The legal system, long assumed to be an immovable pillar of democracy, has shown itself to be alarmingly susceptible to political pressure, partisan judges, and the sheer chaos that Trumpism thrives on. The spectacle of multiple indictments has not weakened his grip on the Republican base; in fact, it's galvanized it.

And while liberal pundits and institutionalists hold out hope that the “system will work,” Trump and his movement continue to demonstrate that they are not bound by those same assumptions. His lawyers delay, his allies obstruct, and his MAGA followers threaten judges, prosecutors, and jurors alike. The idea that justice will arrive neatly wrapped in a court decision feels increasingly like a comfortable delusion. If there’s any accountability to be had, it won’t come from the system finally doing its job. It will come from the people refusing to cede power to an authoritarian movement that has made its disdain for democracy and the rule of law painfully clear.

The delusion that a leader as corrupt and authoritarian as Trump can be held to account through the normal workings of the legal system has no historical support. When Nixon resigned under the weight of the Watergate scandal, it was only after a bipartisan political consensus turned against him— not because the system was inherently self-correcting. And even then, Gerald Ford’s pardon ensured Nixon faced no real consequences... other than embarrassment. And recall that Jefferson Davis and other Confederate leaders were never truly punished for leading a rebellion that killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. The lesson? America has a long history of prioritizing "reconciliation" or "moving on" over justice.

Trump, more so Nixon or Davis, has cultivated a movement built on grievance and vengeance, one that actively seeks to dismantle the very institutions we would rely on to hold him accountable. Every legal delay, every weak institutional response, further demonstrates what Hannah Arendt once called the “profound bankruptcy of democratic institutions” in the face of rising authoritarianism. We’re not so much witnessing the justice system at work as we are its severe limitations. And like in so many historical moments before, if justice doesn’t come from popular collective moral clarity and political will, it simply won’t come at all. And… that’s not going to happen in our currently super-polarized country, is it?