During our most recent presidential election Democrats chose to label the Republican candidate as “a threat to democracy.” I, like many others, considered that to be rather an over the top and ridiculous statement to make for our country is a solid democracy. It involves free elections whereby we elect representatives to govern us. However, our democracy involves more than the just right of free elections. A major part of it also involves the three established branches of government, the executive, the legislative and the judicial branch, all of which operate within a system of checks and balances.
The legislative branch (Congress) proposes laws and funds various aspects of our government and is held in check by the executive branch (President) which has the final say in such legislation by the power of approval, signing it into law, or veto, refusing to sign it into law. However, a built in democratic over-ride procedure afforded to the legislative branch can over turn the executive branch’s veto and still put the laws into effect. The same holds true for funding allocations for various parts of the government. Additionally the approved laws can be brought before the judicial branch (Supreme Court) to determine, if in fact, they are legal according to the laws of the land. This branch of government has the power to remove laws put in place by the other two branches. And these laws can also be challenged in a lower courts system in the U.S. before they reach the Supreme Court. So as you can see the founding fathers put in place a finely honed democratic system allowing each branch to operate in a power-balanced fashion.
However, what I have suddenly realized is if one of the branches decides to not abide by the established rules of this democratic process, there really isn’t any immediate power the other branches of government have to constrain this aberrant behavior. The recent actions by the executive branch involving the mass deportation of Venezuelans have made this flaw in the democratic process design quite evident.
For example, if an average citizen disobeys a judge’s order they can be found in contempt of court and immediately jailed. However, this doesn’t hold true for the executive branch (President) of our country. Standing presidents cannot have charges brought against them by courts of law while in office. And as has been recently demonstrated by President Donald Trump, he and his administration can ignore federal judges' court rulings and there are NO consequences. And by extension, this also applies to rulings by the judicial branch (Supreme Court) of the federal government. Even the highest court in the nation has no real power to make the executive branch conform to its rulings.
Please remember that the previously established accepted and followed democratic procedure for disagreeing with any judge’s ruling is filing an appeal in court to get the ruling over turned. But obviously, as recently demonstrated by the present administration, that no longer applies to the executive branch of the federal government. Their approach, the President can just ignore it.
In fact, the response by the present governing administration is that federal judges shouldn’t have the power of the courts to overrule the orders of the President, and such judges should be impeached for they “seek to impede the power of the President.”
So far, by over 120 presidential executive orders in as many days, the democratic funding powers of the legislative branch of the U.S. government have been ignored by the president with no consequences, and now the democratic judicial powers are also being ignored. Are we already witnessing a preemptive threat to democracy? Should the executive branch (President) of U.S. government be able to ignore the orders of the courts, one of the major foundations of the democratic process , when you can’t? Please pause, take a moment, and think about it.
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