Constitutional Monarchy

[JudgeRightly]

I don't understand how you find so many words to say in response

I’ll try to keep things shorter, but I’m also trying to be as clear as possible, because your proposed solution has consequences you have not accounted for, and so far have not addressed.

(I'm also really passionate about this topic.)

to such a simple concept as not setting a man in a de-facto position above the law, which you admit is precisely what your proposed system would do.

No, I do not admit that.

I admit that the king would have no superior earthly civil court above him.

That is not the same thing as being above the law.

The king is under God’s law. He is under the Constitution. He is under the Criminal Code. If he violates them, he acts unlawfully. The fact that no domestic superior court exists above him does not make his crime lawful.

You are still treating “not prosecuted by a higher earthly court” as though it means “legally permitted.” That does not follow. Law can condemn even where no superior earthly court can prosecute.

If the nation in question had a covenant relationship with the living God such as what Israel had, everything you say would be valid, as it is, it's just a recipe for almost immediate and potentially permanent tyranny. The king in your proposed system would have both the motive and opportunity to exercise absolute power. To expect that it would not happen is naive.

This makes me think you didn't read my post fully, or at the very least, you missed my main point.

I have repeatedly acknowledged that an evil king may become a tyrant. That is a real danger.

But your proposal does not remove the danger of tyranny. It changes where the danger resides. Instead of one visible, mortal king who will eventually die, it creates a standing mechanism by which institutional forces can remove, intimidate, or control kings indefinitely.

That is the tradeoff I am objecting to.

Even so, I suspect that your proposed system as it sits would be superior to the one we live under now, at least initially, but it isn't likely to remain that way precisely because it ignores human nature

No, it does not ignore human nature.

It assumes human nature.

That is precisely why Bob was so concerned about juries, committees, democracies, republics, bureaucracies, and institutional power. Sinful men hide behind groups, processes, offices, and procedures. Responsibility gets diffused until no one is finally accountable.

The proposed constitutional monarchy does not pretend the king cannot be evil. It locates responsibility in one visible man.

and the axiom that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

“Absolute power corrupts absolutely” is not quite right. Power does not magically corrupt a righteous man; it gives corrupt men the opportunity to act on the corruption already in them.

But that cuts both ways. A corrupt king with final earthly authority is dangerous, but so is a corrupt judicial class with authority over the king. If power is dangerous in the hands of sinful men, then the power to remove the king is not made safe merely because it belongs to human judges.

Placing the king above the law is unjust, by definition. That single point along is enough to end the debate on this point - or ought to be.

Agreed.

But that's not my position.

My position is that the king is under the law, but not under a superior earthly civil office.

Not the same thing at all.

I say again, my proposed modification is only necessary precisely because we would not enjoy the special relationship with God that Israel enjoyed and it does not put the nation in danger of a tyrannical judiciary.

I understand why you think it is necessary. I disagree that it avoids the danger.

It may not create a judiciary that governs openly as king, but it does create a judiciary with final authority over whether the king remains king. That is enough to make every king rule under the shadow of the bench.

For that to happen, the judiciary would have to usurp the entire government as constituted, in which case we'd no longer be talking about the proposed system. The system we are discussing would have no legal means by which the judiciary could take control of the government in the place of a king. The selection of the king is already spelled out and so if one gets removed, the judiciary doesn't get to simply install either itself or someone of it's liking as king. The only thing that happens is that a new king is selected by constitutional means. In other words, the only people with the authority to remove a king have nothing to gain politically by doing so for any reason other than that the current king is corrupt. It's not like the government would work like a Klingon Battle Cruiser where if an officer is assassinated, everyone below him get a promotion.

All of this was addressed in my previous post. Please take note:

The judiciary does not need to install itself as king in order to exercise power over the throne.

It does not need to govern day-to-day in order to control what kind of king is tolerated.

It does not need to personally profit by taking the crown in order to profit by removing a righteous obstacle.

And it does not need to directly select the next king in order for removal to serve evil. Sometimes removing the good man is the whole point.

So the issue is not whether the judiciary formally becomes king. It's whether the judiciary, or whoever captures or influences it, can use the removal mechanism as a lawful-looking weapon against the king.

That remains my objection.

A king under law is one thing.

A king under judges is another.

 

[Nick M]

The king has to be above the law and all those in government. We don't have it now, and the Supreme Court shows with its hard left leaning. It is a 1-8 minority with Thomas alone on the right. And they get many things wrong, speaking strictly to the constitution. They rightly over turned Chevron Deference, and for the wrong reason. It is an Article 1 violation and that isn't the reason stated in her majority opinion. They already don't obey the law.

 

[JudgeRightly]

The king has to be above the law

The king has to be the final earthly civil authority, not "above the law."

The king is under the law, whether he likes it or not.

 

[Clete]

The king has to be the final earthly civil authority, not "above the law."

The king is under the law, whether he likes it or not.

If this is the case then what are we even talking about?

What is the legal penalty if the king rapes someone?

If you say anything other than that he is tried in court and executed upon conviction then don't talk to me about the king being under the law because he isn't.

You simply don't get to have it both ways. I don't except it when someone speaks out of one side of their mouth to insist that the king is under the law and then talk about how having a corrupt king with final earthly authority is dangerous! Why is it dangerous if he's under the law?

Also, the only false equivalence being presented here is this...

"A corrupt king with final earthly authority is dangerous, but so is a corrupt judicial class with authority over the king."

As if the judiciary magically because a fiat monarch by committee by virtue of the fact that a legal process exists that permits someone to do something about a corrupt king. That's ridiculous. Does the Senate become the President when they override a veto or when they impeach him? Does the Supreme Court abdicate the office of the Presidency when they rule against him in a particular case? NO! Of course they don't!

My modification allowing for the removal of a corrupt king doesn't somehow also give them the ability to make new law or in any other way become tyrannical. You can throw that out there as a sort of scare tactic but it isn't anything more than that. In effect, all you are really arguing is that there isn't any system that can be formulated at all that has any ability whatsoever to prevent or even mitigate tyranny. If that's the case then why bother discussing it?

 

[JudgeRightly]

If this is the case then what are we even talking about?

What is the legal penalty if the king rapes someone?

If you say anything other than that he is tried in court and executed upon conviction then don't talk to me about the king being under the law because he isn't.

The legal penalty is death. The issue is not the penalty; it is jurisdiction. If the king rapes someone, he is guilty before God, the Constitution, and the Criminal Code, but no superior domestic court has jurisdiction over the final earthly civil authority. That does not mean “no law.” It means no higher earthly court.

You simply don't get to have it both ways.

I am not trying to have it both ways. I am making the same distinction the proposed Constitution makes when it says, “The King, though required to obey the laws herein, dwells above the jurisdiction of any other court in the land,” and that if he violates the Constitution, “no American court has standing to prosecute him” but he “awaits the Judgment of God.” The king is under the law as the standard that binds and condemns him, but he is not under a superior earthly court with jurisdiction to prosecute him. Those are not the same claim. You are treating “under the law” as though it can only mean “subject to prosecution by a higher earthly office,” but the Constitution itself distinguishes obedience from court jurisdiction. The king is under the law. The king is not under judges.

I don't except it when someone speaks out of one side of their mouth to insist that the king is under the law and then talk about how having a corrupt king with final earthly authority is dangerous! Why is it dangerous if he's under the law?

Because being under the law does not magically make a man righteous. A corrupt king with final earthly authority is dangerous because he may violate the very law he is required to obey. The law binds him, condemns him, and removes his excuse, but it does not force his heart to submit.

The same is true of every civil authority. A judge is under the law. A police officer is under the law. A president is under the law. Are corrupt judges, police officers, or presidents not dangerous? Of course they are. Not because the law permits their corruption, but because wicked men with authority can use that authority wickedly.

So there is no contradiction in saying the king is under the law while also saying a corrupt king is dangerous. The contradiction only appears if “under the law” is redefined to mean “incapable of violating the law” or “automatically prosecutable by a superior earthly court.” That is not what I mean, and it is not what the proposed Constitution says. It says the king is required to obey the law, while also saying no American court has standing to prosecute him. Those two ideas are not contradictory. They are the exact distinction I am making.

Also, the only false equivalence being presented here is this...

"A corrupt king with final earthly authority is dangerous, but so is a corrupt judicial class with authority over the king."

As if the judiciary magically because a fiat monarch by committee by virtue of the fact that a legal process exists that permits someone to do something about a corrupt king. That's ridiculous.

That is not what I am arguing. I am not saying the judiciary becomes a fiat monarch by committee. I am saying that if the judiciary has final authority to indict, try, condemn, remove, and replace the king, then it has final earthly authority over the throne.

It does not have to perform every function of the king to have authority over him. If the king remains king only so long as the judiciary permits him to remain king, then the judiciary is superior at the decisive point.

So the comparison is not false. Both systems place final earthly authority somewhere. Mine places it in the king. Yours places it in the men who can remove the king. That is the distinction.

Does the Senate become the President when they override a veto or when they impeach him? Does the Supreme Court abdicate the office of the Presidency when they rule against him in a particular case? NO! Of course they don't!

Those examples prove my point more than yours. A president is not a monarch. The American system is built on divided civil authority, so Congress and the courts can check the president precisely because the president is not the final earthly civil authority.

That is the kind of separation-of-powers framework Bob was arguing against. He argued that no practical authority can exist above the leader, or else that authority would be the leader, and that authority flows downhill, not uphill.

You are importing a divided-power framework into monarchy and saying it does not compromise monarchy. But it does. If the judiciary can remove the king, then the king is not the final earthly civil authority. The removal body is.

My modification allowing for the removal of a corrupt king doesn't somehow also give them the ability to make new law or in any other way become tyrannical.

They do not need the power to make new law in order to have power over the throne.

The issue is not whether the judiciary becomes king in every function. The issue is whether the king remains king only by permission of the judiciary. If the court can remove him, then every king must govern under that threat.

That gives the judiciary power to shape what kind of king is tolerated. It can decide what kind of firmness counts as “tyranny,” what kind of enforcement is “abuse,” what kind of refusal to cooperate is “lawlessness,” and what kind of resistance to institutional pressure becomes grounds for removal.

That is not lawmaking in the formal sense, but it is still rule by threat. A court does not have to write new laws if it can declare that the king’s enforcement of existing law makes him unfit to rule.

You can throw that out there as a sort of scare tactic but it isn't anything more than that.

But that is exactly my point.

If the removal mechanism can function as a “scare tactic” against the king, then it is already a power over the king. It does not have to remove him often. It only has to make him govern with the knowledge that the judiciary can begin proceedings if he crosses whatever line they decide to enforce.

A threat does not have to be arbitrary to be coercive. A king who rules under threat of removal by subordinate judges is not the final earthly civil authority. He is ruling under judicial supervision.

So calling it a “scare tactic” does not weaken my objection. It proves the leverage exists. A sword does not have to fall in order to rule the man standing beneath it.

In effect, all you are really arguing is that there isn't any system that can be formulated at all that has any ability whatsoever to prevent or even mitigate tyranny. If that's the case then why bother discussing it?

No, that is not what I am arguing. I am saying every civil structure must place final earthly authority somewhere, so the question is not whether tyranny can be mitigated, but whether the proposed mitigation actually helps or merely creates another path to tyranny. Bob’s system mitigates tyranny by fixing the law, rejecting committee-rule, and locating responsibility in one visible ruler under God’s law. Your proposal creates a legal power over the king, and whoever controls that power becomes the final earthly authority at the decisive point. The cure must not recreate the disease in another form.

 

[Clete]

The legal penalty is death. The issue is not the penalty; it is jurisdiction. If the king rapes someone, he is guilty before God, the Constitution, and the Criminal Code, but no superior domestic court has jurisdiction over the final earthly civil authority. That does not mean “no law.” It means no higher earthly court.

Where there is no court, there is no law.

I am not trying to have it both ways. I am making the same distinction the proposed Constitution makes when it says, “The King, though required to obey the laws herein, dwells above the jurisdiction of any other court in the land,” and that if he violates the Constitution, “no American court has standing to prosecute him” but he “awaits the Judgment of God.”

Okay, then it is both you and the proposed Constitution that is trying to have it both ways.

An unenforceable law is no law at all. The fact that the king would answer to God is no different than any other criminal except that right now, the king gets to whatever he desires with no way for the criminal justice system to touch him.

The king is under the law as the standard that binds and condemns him, but he is not under a superior earthly court with jurisdiction to prosecute him. Those are not the same claim. You are treating “under the law” as though it can only mean “subject to prosecution by a higher earthly office,” but the Constitution itself distinguishes obedience from court jurisdiction. The king is under the law. The king is not under judges.
Because being under the law does not magically make a man righteous. A corrupt king with final earthly authority is dangerous because he may violate the very law he is required to obey. The law binds him, condemns him, and removes his excuse, but it does not force his heart to submit.

The difference there is the difference between moral law and criminal law. They are not the same thing. Everyone everywhere is subject to moral law and will answer to God for their immorality. We are here discussing criminal justice and it is that which the proposed system would place the king above.

The same is true of every civil authority. A judge is under the law. A police officer is under the law. A president is under the law. Are corrupt judges, police officers, or presidents not dangerous? Of course they are. Not because the law permits their corruption, but because wicked men with authority can use that authority wickedly.

The difference being that corrupt governing officials can be removed from office as a result of their corruption by the very same legal system in which they are employed.

So there is no contradiction in saying the king is under the law while also saying a corrupt king is dangerous. The contradiction only appears if “under the law” is redefined to mean “incapable of violating the law” or “automatically prosecutable by a superior earthly court.” That is not what I mean, and it is not what the proposed Constitution says. It says the king is required to obey the law, while also saying no American court has standing to prosecute him. Those two ideas are not contradictory. They are the exact distinction I am making.

The contradiction exists is say that "the king is required to obey the law" and in the same breath, "no American court has standing to prosecute him". The later negates the former. If he can't be prosecuted then he is not required to obey the law, except from a moral perspective, which, once again, is not what we are talking about.

That is not what I am arguing. I am not saying the judiciary becomes a fiat monarch by committee.

And I'm telling you that there'd be no way for that to ever occur.

I am saying that if the judiciary has final authority to indict, try, condemn, remove, and replace the king, then it has final earthly authority over the throne.

No single judge would be able to do so. Those who bring the charge would have to prove their case in court and are not allowed to sit as judge.
In other words, you are presupposing a conflict of interest that would not exist.
The provisions in the law that allow for the removal of a criminal king would have to be crafted in such a way as to prevent conflicts of interest such as what I just said as well as things like anyone involved in the prosecution of such a case would not be permitted to gain a promotion in authority as a result of such legal action. One could even make it such that only those with legal standing could bring a charge against the king, just as it is that only those with legal standing could bring a charge against anyone else. In other words, you could make it such that no judge could bring charges against the king simply because he wanted to. There'd have to not only be evidence but the one bringing the charge would have to be either the one directly harmed by the offense or a member of the victims family.

All such details instantly send us off into the weeds, which is why I've actively avoided discussing them with any specificity. The point here being that there are ways to prevent conflicts of interest such as what you are suggesting would be used to coerce the king into being the judiciary's puppet.

It does not have to perform every function of the king to have authority over him.

But it would have to perform every function of the king in order to become a monarchy by committee. A committee, by the way, that is already forbidden by the proposed constitution.

If the king remains king only so long as the judiciary permits him to remain king, then the judiciary is superior at the decisive point.

Except that it wouldn't work that way. You're reacting to this as if the judiciary is some body of politicians like a Senate or something. It isn't. The judiciary is just the word we are using to refer to all of the judges around the country. All of whom sit on their own bench in their own home town residing over their own jurisdiction. There is no pool of people exerting political power via a voting process as would be the case in any committee.



I'm out of time! I think that pretty much covers it though.

 

[Idolater]

Surely an absolute monarch has the right to retire.

If he says, "I am no longer king. Do not obey me anymore," then his subjects should obey him.

There's a succession process when the king dies. Who holds custody of that process? We can't just say, "Well, the next king," because we don't necessarily know who that is yet. By we, I mean we his subjects, under this hypothetical political situation of an absolute monarchy, where there is no man who can judge the monarch. In the constitution where the king is judged by no man, iow. We his subjects, are not judging the king, when he says I quit. He's saying he's not the king anymore. It's not insubordination or sitting in judgment of him to believe him. He doesn't want to be king anymore. He abdicates, he retires, he quits, he abrogates his duty, he vacates the office. He literally goes on vacation, radio silence, never comes back. Never calls, never writes. He's not the king anymore. His subjects have not the right but the duty, to commence with succession. And that is a power. Powers are vested in offices, so there is an office in which the power of administrating the process of succession is vested, and it is an office which is occupied by royal subjects, in this hypothetical state; not by the king. The old king is dead, and the new king hasn't been crowned yet. It's a brief period of vacancy. Whoever is overseeing that process has real power and occupies a real office. Real as in ontological realness. Whether or not it's advertised, it exists, and someone is holding that office.