"The ministers of the law are its magistrates; the interpreters of the law are the judges; we are therefore all slaves of the Laws, that we may enjoy freedom." - Cicero
Looking for causes of the Roman Empire's downfall is nothing new, and I don't offer the following so much as a tally mark in the column of this or that particular cause, but rather I offer it as a testament to two things:
1) The greatness of the founding fathers and the constitution of the United States, and
2) The interconnection between the Roman Republic's downfall, and the drafting of the constitution of the United States.
When Hannibal threatened Rome, the Senate realized it must invest greater and greater power in a military executive in order that the Republic survive. This tension, between parliament and absolute monarch, republican senate and president, or Presbyterian kirk and glorious revolutionary, has plagued nations ever since. Although 220 years is not enough time to be sure, it appears the United States may have solved this problem. The three branch government, with its independent judiciary and the supremacy of the rule of law which our constitution implies and our courts protect, has resolved this dilemma perhaps better than any other attempt in history.
Marbury v. Madison, United States v. Nixon, FDR's attempts to pack the court, and even Bush v. Gore have tested the separation of powers, and in each of these (and most other) cases, the court (and thereby the rule of law) has triumphed.
If the Romans had had a Supreme Court that established powers of judicial review and independence, perhaps we'd all be speaking Latin today.
No comments:
Post a Comment