Okay JudgeRightly, let's look at this a slightly different way...
Let's say that a king publicly renounces the Constitution and abdicates the throne and a judge certifies the vacancy and initiate the succession process.
Who is sovereign?
The judge is making a determination.
The judge is enforcing a consequence.
The judge is applying the law.
Almost nobody would say, "Therefore, the judge is sovereign."
Why?
Because he is not exercising independent discretion. He's merely administering a legal consequence.
If this were not so, the phrase "the rule of law" would have no meaning.
Granting the abdication example for the sake of the analogy, it still does not prove what you need it to prove.
If the king publicly renounces the Constitution and abdicates, then the vacancy is created by the king’s own act. The judge, in your example, is not removing a sitting king. He is recognizing that the king has already vacated the throne. That is a ministerial recognition of an existing vacancy, not an act of jurisdiction over a reigning monarch.
And even then, Bob’s proposed succession process does not appear to make a judge the officer who determines or administers succession. The succession process points to the Queen, or if there is none, the king’s eldest daughter, or if there is none, the chief military officer, as the relevant overseer when succession must proceed. Judges continue doing their ordinary job during an interregnum; they are not made the authority that declares the throne vacant and sets succession in motion.
Now modify the example:
If a king is convicted under a constitutionally prescribed process of committing specified constitutional violations, the judge shall certify the vacancy and initiate the succession process.
The judge is makes a determination.
The judge is enforces a consequence.
The judge simply applies the law.
But now you have changed the relevant fact. In the abdication example, the king creates the vacancy by his own act, and the judge merely recognizes that the throne has already been vacated. In this modified example, the judge creates the vacancy by judgment. The king has not vacated the throne. He is removed from it by a process administered by others.
You keep saying the judge “simply applies the law,” but applying the law is not nothing. A judge who sentences a criminal “applies the law,” but he still exercises authority over the defendant in that proceeding. Likewise, if a judge can convict the king and certify that the throne is now vacant, then he is not merely recognizing an existing vacancy. He is participating in the act that makes the vacancy exist. I am not arguing that the judge becomes sovereign or king. I am saying that in that proceeding, he exercises authority over the king.
You see a huge difference but there isn't one. It's nothing at all but the rule of law.
We, at least ostensibly have the rule of law in the United States now, but nobody imagines that statutes float through the air arresting people. Everyone understands that judges, juries, police officers, marshals, and soldiers are applying the law. The phrase "rule of law" refers to the source of authority and legitimacy, not to the physical actor(s) carrying out the action.
Right, statutes do not float through the air arresting people. Men act. That is my point. The question is not whether men act under legal authority, but what that authority permits them to do. If the law authorizes men to arrest a thief, they may arrest a thief. If it authorizes men to remove the king, they may remove the king.
“Rule of law” does not sanctify every mechanism written into law. A legal process can still be evil, dangerous, or useful to wicked men. Your proposal grants legal legitimacy to a mechanism that can remove good kings as well as wicked ones. You seek to prevent the evil of a tyrant by authorizing a process through which other sinful men can unseat the king. We are not to do evil that good may come. If rule of law concerns the source of authority and legitimacy, then that is exactly the issue: you are making the removal mechanism a legitimate authority against the throne.
There is another aspect of this that I don't think you've addressed.
You keep speaking as though a removal mechanism necessarily creates a permanent alternative center of power over the throne. That simply does not follow.
Yes, it does. Your proposal is a permanent fixture, and its purpose is to remove a king. At the point the king is removed, whoever is empowered to remove him has authority over him. That is how authority flow works.
A staff sergeant cannot walk up to a five-star general and relieve him of command on his own authority. He does not outrank the general. He can only do so lawfully if he is acting under authority higher than the general. Likewise, a judge is lower than the king. If the king is truly the highest earthly authority in the land, then no domestic officer outranks him. For a judge to remove him, the judge must be given authority over him in that proceeding, even if only temporarily, and even if you say he is acting under the law.
Thus, your mechanism is a permanent alternative center of power over the throne, even when dormant. The threat of activation is enough to condition a king’s rule. If a judge can use the law to remove the king, then either he is above the king at that point, or his judgment has become the final earthly expression of the law at that point.
And that is not a stance you want to take. You object that without a removal mechanism the king’s will could become effectively supreme, but your solution makes the judge’s judgment effectively supreme at the decisive point. You have not eliminated the autocratic danger; you have codified it into the removal mechanism. If the judge is merely under the law, then he cannot use the law to remove the highest earthly authority unless the law gives him authority over that man in that proceeding.
Under my proposed modification, if a king is lawfully removed for egregious constitutional violations, the judges do not become rulers.
Not rulers in the usual sense, no. But they do not have to become kings in order to exercise ruling authority over the throne at the decisive point. A man who can determine whether the king remains king has authority over the king in that proceeding, even if he goes back to ordinary judging afterward.
And the danger is not limited to judges wanting the crown for themselves. Evil men do not need to become king in order to profit from removing a good king. A righteous king is himself an obstacle to evil, so removing him is the profit. If the next king is selected by lottery, the wicked need not hand-pick the successor. They only need to remove the obstacle and spin the wheel again, hoping for someone weaker, more fearful, more corruptible, less wise, less principled, or more compatible with their purposes. And once that mechanism exists, the threat may be enough. A king who knows the same legal machinery can be aimed at him if he resists certain interests is already ruling under that shadow.
They do not become an aristocracy. They do not become a parliament.
Not in name, no. But titles are not the issue. If they can remove the king, threaten the king, or make the crown unsafe for a king who resists them, then they exercise power over the throne in function, even if not in form. That is rule by proxy.
They do not inherit the powers of the throne.
No one said they did.
The throne simply becomes vacant and the normal succession process takes over, just as it would if the king died.
But “simply becomes vacant” is doing the work. When the king dies, death creates the vacancy. When he abdicates, his own act creates the vacancy. Under your proposal, other men create the vacancy by judging and removing him against his will. Succession afterward does not answer who had authority to create the vacancy in the first place. The judges do not need to inherit the powers of the throne; if they can lawfully unmake the king, they have authority over him in that proceeding.
So let me ask a direct question:
Once the king is removed, where exactly do you believe the authority of the judges goes?
Under my proposal, it goes nowhere. They simply continue being the same judges in the same jurisdictions they had before the king was charged. The only thing that changes is that a new king is selected according to the constitutional process and the monarchy continues.
It does not need to “go” anywhere afterward. The issue is not what powers the judges keep after the king is removed, but what authority they exercised in order to remove him. A judge who sentences a man to death does not become the dead man’s heir or master afterward, but he still exercised authority over him in the proceeding. Likewise, if judges can lawfully make the throne vacant by judgment, then they exercised authority over the king at the decisive point, even if they return to ordinary judging afterward.
So saying “they simply continue being judges” does not answer the objection. Under your proposal, “being judges” includes the power to unmake the king. That authority remains built into the system as a permanent latent power over the throne. It may go dormant after one king is removed, but it remains available for the next king, and the next, and the next. The issue is not whether judges inherit the crown. The issue is whether they can lawfully remove the man who wears it.
Even if I grant your worst-case scenario and assume corrupt judges fabricate charges against a righteous king, what follows? Have they become sovereign? Have they become the governing authority? Not necessarily. Unless they have also corrupted the succession process itself, the result is simply that one king has been wrongly removed and another king takes his place.
That understates the danger. Evil men do not have to become sovereign in the formal sense, nor personally inherit the throne, in order to profit from removing a righteous king. A good king is himself an obstacle to evil, so removing him is already a victory. If the next king is selected by lottery, they do not have to control the whole succession process. They only have to remove the obstacle and spin the wheel again, hoping for someone weaker, more fearful, less principled, less wise, more corruptible, or simply more compatible with their purposes.
And once that possibility exists, they may not even need to remove him. The threat may be enough. A king who knows the same legal machinery can be aimed at him if he resists certain interests is already ruling under that shadow. So the issue is not whether corrupt judges become kings afterward. The issue is whether the mechanism gives wicked men a lawful-looking way to remove, or threaten to remove, a good king who stands in their way.
That is certainly a serious problem, but it is a different problem from the one you keep describing.
More importantly, if the judges are already corrupt enough to knowingly violate the Constitution, fabricate charges, and unjustly remove a king, then they are already outside the legal order. At that point, why would they be incapable of violating the Constitution in some other manner if no removal mechanism existed?
If they are willing to overthrow the law, the problem is not the existence of a removal mechanism, the problem is the corruption of the judges.
Of course corrupt judges could violate the Constitution in other ways. That has never been in dispute. The question is whether your proposal gives their corruption a lawful-looking path to the throne. Without your removal mechanism, corrupt judges who want to unseat a righteous king must act outside the constitutional order through rebellion, conspiracy, extra-legal justification, or sedition. With your mechanism, they can pursue the same end through a process the Constitution itself recognizes: standing, charges, evidence, judgment, vacancy, and “rule of law.”
That is exactly the problem I am describing. Wicked men can always abuse power, but structure determines what tools they have available. Your proposal gives them a tool they otherwise would not have: a constitutionally legitimate process for unmaking the king. A sword may be used righteously or wickedly, but that does not mean every man should be handed a sword pointed at the throne. The mechanism does not merely restrain evil. It also creates a legal road by which evil may travel.
In fact, consider what I see as the two worst-case scenarios.
Scenario A:
A wicked king openly violates the Constitution for forty years. He appoints judges, influences regional authorities, raises and prepares an heir, entrenches corruption throughout the system, and eventually passes the throne to a son who continues the same pattern. There is no lawful remedy available anywhere in the system.
This scenario assumes quite a bit.
First, if we are talking about Bob’s proposed Constitution, I do not think the king appoints judges in the way your scenario assumes. That seems imported from another system.
Second, a wicked king influencing regional authorities is a real danger, but it is not unique to monarchy. Any system can be corrupted through pressure, fear, bribery, ideology, or institutional capture. Your removal mechanism does not eliminate that danger. It creates another high-value target for it.
Third, “there is no lawful remedy available anywhere in the system” overstates the point. There may be no superior domestic court that can prosecute and depose the king, but judges, soldiers, households, and local authorities remain bound to God and the law. They may refuse unlawful orders, expose evil, withhold cooperation, and preserve the law locally.
So yes, Scenario A is bad. A wicked king is dangerous. But the question is whether your proposed cure creates a greater structural danger by giving other sinful men a lawful mechanism to unmake the throne.
Scenario B:
Corrupt judges falsely accuse and wrongly remove a righteous king. The throne becomes vacant. The constitutional succession process is followed. A new king is installed. The judges return to being judges.
Both scenarios are bad. Neither is desirable, but I do not see is why Scenario B is obviously more dangerous than Scenario A.
Because Scenario B is not merely “one king wrongly removed.” It means the constitutional structure itself has become the instrument by which righteous kings may be removed. A wicked king is dangerous, but the structure has not authorized his evil. In Scenario B, the mechanism itself gives wicked men a lawful-looking path to remove a righteous king while claiming to defend the Constitution.
Succession continuing does not solve the problem. Evil men do not need to control succession perfectly. If a good king stands in their way, removing him is already the profit. Then they spin the wheel again. They only need the next king to be weaker, more fearful, more corruptible, less wise, less principled, or more compatible with their purposes than the righteous king they removed.
And an evil institutionalized interest group with the resources to manipulate this mechanism can be just as permanent as the law it uses. Kings die. Individual judges die. Conspirators die. But an entrenched interest can recruit replacements, preserve strategy, control narratives, and operate through the same legal machinery generation after generation. Nor must it remove every king. The precedent alone becomes leverage. It does not need to wear the crown. It only needs to control the process that can make the crown unsafe.
On the contrary, Scenario A appears to be far more stable, self-perpetuating, and capable of corrupting the nation for generations.
So I still come back to the same question:
Why is the danger posed by a limited removal mechanism greater than the danger posed by a king who cannot be removed at all?
You stated part of the answer yourself. Scenario A is “more stable.” Exactly. That is one reason it is not automatically worse in structural terms. A wicked king is dangerous, but the system remains a monarchy with one visible, mortal man at the top, still under fixed law, still capable of repentance, still capable of death, and still followed by succession.
Your “self-perpetuating” point cuts both ways. A wicked king may try to perpetuate corruption through an heir, but an institutionalized interest group that controls a removal mechanism can perpetuate itself more effectively. It does not depend on one man surviving or one biological heir continuing the pattern. Its members die, but the institution recruits replacements, trains successors, preserves its interests, and continues operating through the same legal machinery.
That is the danger Bob warned about with corrupt institutions. A man may repent. A king may repent. A son may reject his father’s wickedness. But corrupt institutions virtually never repent. Robert Conquest captured the same tendency in his laws of politics, especially that “any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing,” and that “the behavior of an organization can best be predicted by assuming it to be controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.” So the danger posed by your removal mechanism is greater because it legalizes a permanent institutional weapon against the throne. A tyrant is dangerous because he is one wicked ruler, but he is still mortal. A captured removal mechanism is dangerous because it becomes an enduring tool by which organized interests can decide which kings are allowed to remain kings.
It seems to me that the worst-case outcome of my proposal is not that the judges become rulers, but simply that one king is wrongly removed and replaced by another king according to the same constitutional process that would have been used had the original king died.
No, the worst-case outcome is rule by proxy. The danger is not that judges put on crowns, inherit the throne, or openly become the governing authority. The danger is that whoever can manipulate the removal mechanism gains practical leverage over the man who wears the crown.
If a righteous king is removed for standing in the way of evil, the mechanism has done more than remove one man. It has warned every future king: resist the wrong interests, and the same process can be aimed at you. The succession process may continue, and the crown may still pass from one man to another, but real power has shifted to whoever can make the crown unsafe. They do not need to become king. They only need enough control over the process to determine which kings are allowed to remain kings.
