Quick question, especially for Benji.
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But what about again taking the Latin American strongman playbook and simply calling up a brand new constitution?
Is there anything that prevents this, or is it one of those things that was never banned because the assumption was nobody would be crass enough to attempt it?
To recite the cliche: the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land.
What's preventing anyone from breaking any law? Well, nothing really. It's about if you can get away with it and if you'll take the punishment if you get caught WITHOUT DYING ON THIS HILL.
To pull another cliche...the thing that's endlessly fascinating to me about Hitler and the Nazi's taking power in Germany was how literal they were about following the process. (Outside of all that street violence.) Hitler went to absurd lengths to get i's dotted and t's crossed on stuff that washed away the government and made him Furher with absolute power.
By comparison, using your example as they're good ones, a lot of Latin American strongmen, and European rulers, simply promulgated New Constitutions because "I said so" though they often had short shelf lives domestically even.
What vexed a lot of people with Chavez is he was going the Hitler route, seemingly doing everything on the up and up even though like, we all know it's not. Really, Putin has done the same thing. Expanding presidential powers legally, stepping down when his term ended, winning elections not completely insanely, etc.
Even with GOP control, I don't think Congress and the Supreme Court and state legislatures would be all like "sure, go ahead Donald." Even in our crumbling republic the separation of powers still works pretty darn well.
I'm not sure how you could even ban it. The person would just ignore it like all the other laws.
On the converse, there's the myth of Jackson saying "Justice John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it." Or that one about how many divisions does the Pope have or whatever. The Chief Justice actually ruled against Abraham Lincoln ordering Winfield Scott to suspend habeas corpus (which only Congress can do it) and Lincoln just ignored it and ordered more martial law and military courts to replace civilian courts. Something he also doesn't have power over and the Supreme Court said even Congress can't suspend when they're still operating (which they were back well beyond the frontlines, yet the military was still arrested sitting Congressmen and expelling them from the country) although that case didn't end until after Lincoln had been killed.
Arguably this process is the norm, since governments of all parties will act and it's only years later that a court case reaches the Supreme Court to slap it down. You know, if they're even allowed to have standing in the first place, which they often aren't.
In a lot of ways we already operate under this. The government does something blatantly prohibited by the Constitution, the Court says nobody has standing to challenge it, problem solved, I mean for them anyway who are you again? Wilson tore the first amendment apart during World War I to an amazing extent, he even went so far as to threaten workers who struck with their being drafted forcing them to sign labor contracts that forbid strikes and other work actions that were binding absent the war. The Sedition Acts basically outlawed telling the truth if it was found to be disloyal to the President. The courts signed off on internment. We haven't had a declaration of war since World War II. And this is all just related to national security/foreign policy stuff!
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Apologies for lack of details, references, links, any errors and stuff, I totally didn't write this while on the can.
