by The Economist News Staff
If the justices do not check an overmighty president, the country will suffer
THE PHRASE “checks and balances” does not appear anywhere in the United States constitution; and yet in a manual for Martians on how America governs itself it would be on page one. Those three words are a reminder that the country has an unwritten constitution, which resides in beliefs, behaviour and legal precedents, to go alongside its more celebrated written constitution. They describe how the branches of government compete for power—a contest where, the founding fathers wrote, “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” The question for the Supreme Court’s new term, which starts next week, is: how much ambition do the justices have?
Over the course of this century the presidency has accumulated power as Congress has stood aside. The justices have been content to wave through gradual increases in presidential authority, steadily rewriting the unwritten constitution as they went. That sort of incremental change is probably necessary when the written part is not working as it should, because of the partisanship that this week shut down the government once again. Yet Donald Trump is taking this indulgent attitude and exploiting it.
His administration combines the theory that the presidency should be all-powerful with a method that makes it seem so. That method involves stretching presidential authority to its limit, without waiting to see if the courts check it. When they catch up, the administration will obey the law (at least after the Supreme Court has had its say), then try another route to the same end. This is not outright defiance, but neither is it deference to a branch of government that should be coequal.
For the court,…
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