Stephen Miller Doesn't Tell the Constitution What to Do. The Constitution Tells Stephen Miller What to Do.
Let's get one thing very fucking clear.
The Trump Regime does not dictate the limits and powers of the Constitution. The Constitution dictates the limits and powers of the Trump Regime.
Stephen Miller doesn’t tell the courts when to stop. The courts tell Stephen Miller when to stop.1
Capisce?
Living through a Fascist Power Grab here in the United States—a flagrant assault on democracy, the courts, and the Rule of Law by the Republican Party and the MAGA / MAHA Alliance (Thanks, Bobby!)—these are the kinds of previously not-in-need-of-saying things that Now Need to Be Said.
And remembered. And acted upon.
Trump and Miller don’t rule the Constitution. The Constitution rules Trump and Miller.
No kings. Not ever.
Bring Us the Body!
Speaking of kings…
in all of constitutional law is there a more dramatic phrase than habeas corpus, Latin for “Deliver the Body”?
The “Great Writ” of habeas corpus is more than a legal doctrine. It is kin to the primordial protoplasm from which law and legal doctrine evolve.
However, in the current Republican/Billionaire/MAGA/MAHA Fascist Power Grab, there is no legal substratum so foundational that Trump won’t seek to destroy or violate it.
In Stephen Miller’s ongoing Ragnarok of Lawlessness, this White House ‘Wehrmacht-iavelli’ is now hallucinating that habeas corpus is (1) optional; and (2) subject to his largesse.
Like, What *is* Habeas Corpus, Really?
How many times do you think something like this happened over the long centuries of English history:
A thundering scrum of men, swords, and horses roars into the village; the tavern; my hut; the town square.
They grab a person—perhaps after blows, or a scuffle, or at dagger point.
Maybe the person has ‘controversial’ views on religious or political matters.
Maybe the person is a midwife or healer.
Maybe the person holds land that a lord covets.
Maybe no one knows why.
The Men-with-Swords seize the person and ride off on their horses.
Ye olde style snatch-and-grab.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT determines what kind of society you live in, that is, whether it more resembles tyranny / totalitarianism, or whether it has at least the rudiments of legal process and the rule of law.
IS YOUR FAMILY MEMBER GONE FOREVER?!?!
OR WILL THEY COME BEFORE A JUDGE?
… BE CHARGED WITH A CRIME?
… HAVE A TRIAL?
This simple question is the Whole of the Law, as it were.
“You shall have the body” is the foundational promise habeas corpus makes to the people, and the most basic burden it requires of the government.
How many times did it unfold that the only thing the Men-with-Swords produced was a body, and not a family’s breathing brother or soul-imbued sister?
How many times was there only a void; a clutch of shadows; a cover-up?
Still; in a functioning legal system, the government, at some point, and before too long, Must Produce the Person.
They cannot just be disappeared.
This makes habeas corpus the essence, the core, and the cornerstone of the Rule of Law and the foundation upon which rests the entirety of Legal Tradition in the English / American lineage.
“No man shall be arrested or imprisoned ... except by the lawful judgment of his peers and by the law of the land.”
—The Magna Carta (39th clause), signed by King John (1215)
MAGA CARTA — ‘Maybe-as Corpus?’
So, yeah, the principle of habeas corpus runs like a living river of ethical-legal-juridical tradition back through the Magna Carta to even deeper wellsprings.
But now this Magna Dumbass, Stephen Miller, thinks he knows better than EIGHT CENTURIES of legal precedent.
Oh, and also… yesterday, Miller told you to your face that he gets to decide whether or not the Constitution of the United States still applies in the United States.
Miller and Trump’s assertion to you and to me, and to the country, is that Stephen Miller gets to decide whether the nation continues its quarter-millennium experiment in democracy (of which only the last six decades have achieved even a baseline of Multiracial Democracy, or a semblance thereof.)
That is an assertion to which our collective response MUST BE:
Fuck that.
A government not constrained by law is not a government.
“The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”
—Constitution of the United States of America, Article I; Section 9, Clause 2.
This phrasing, construction, and idea was inspired by Symone Sanders Townsend.
Bravo! Very well said. Miller is such a total ignoramus, not to mention an idiot.
And he is creepy.
I seem to have passed some kind of test to get logged in. I am expecting excellent comments.