Trump and the Rule of Law

Note: A different version of this article was written as an editorial for a newspaper in Macau, China, which publishes in Portuguese and Mandarin. The reference to the “rule of law” and the system of checks and balances in the United States addresses political and economic policies that adhere to similar laws in the Special Administrative Regions of Macau and Hong Kong. The use of the U.S. model as applied to historical events is for comparison purposes only, and does not reflect opinions on other systems of government.

The imminent release of the Mueller Report, detailing potential charges concerning Russian interference in the 2016 elections against U.S. President Donald Trump and his campaign organization, provides another teachable moment that touches on both global and domestic affairs. As we await the report’s release, Trump is negotiating trade tariffs with China, a truce with North Korea, and planning to withdraw troops from Syria, while denying the mounting evidence of a conspiracy with Russia. At the same time, he has declared a national emergency to fund his “border wall” on America’s southern border with Mexico, and is continuing his draconian immigration policies. Meanwhile, Trump’s support in the U.S. is at its lowest point ever, hovering around 36% according to some pollsters, as calls for his impeachment by legislators are growing and investigations of his family’s financial ties to Russia and Saudi Arabia are being conducted by the Southern District of New York.

The question for many people, especially among immigrants in the United States, is whether the principle of the “rule of law” can withstand the Trump episode, and what this will mean in the future. As in most democratic unions, U.S. law is fundamentally based on a system of checks and balances, with power shared by three independent units: an elected Congress (the House of Representatives and the Senate), an elected Executive (the President), and an appointed Supreme Court, whose nine members serve for life. When one of the elected units begins to overstep its authority, as Trump seems to be doing, the rule of law in the U.S. is designed to correct the imbalance based on interpretations of the original 1789 constitution and supported by the Supreme Court. Trump and other presidents have tried to appoint justices who they believed would rule in their favor, but legal precedents, new rulings, and historical events have usually resulted in corrections in line with the constitution. A belief in how this “system” is supposed to work is the principle expectation that keeps many people in the U.S. interested and politically invested.

An Experience with the U.S. Rule of Law

Personal experience can sometimes influence the belief that the U.S. system has the capacity to correct deviant behavior. In my case, it began with the experiences of immigrant parents who arrived in the United States in 1955 and were eligible to vote in 1960. As they often did during dinner, my father and mother discussed the news of the day. One night during the civil rights period, just after John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, my father said that if his successor, Lyndon Johnson, and Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General, were able to pass and enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Johnson would have his support.

This was the earliest instance that I can remember my parents revealing their political preferences. As Macanese from Hong Kong, they always had been reluctant to voice their opinions to other Americans as they learned about modes of behavior in their adopted country. And like many, they were deeply saddened when Kennedy was killed. The manner of his death, in retrospect, was especially shocking because of their experiences during the war in Asia, first by witnessing the invasion of Hong Kong and later as refugees in Macau amid the dire conditions there. Kennedy’s shooting and the virulence of racial discrimination, which they also experienced, was so unexpected because their images of America seemed far removed from the cruelty that they had witnessed first-hand during World War II. Now, during a period of social and political upheaval in the 1960s, they understood how vulnerable their young family could be, like all people of color, if Lyndon Johnson was not able to secure their civil rights in 1964.

That law ultimately passed, as did the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which helped to solidify the fundamental rights of many immigrants and other disenfranchised people. Since then, there have been unsuccessful attempts to overturn those laws, the most recent during the 2016 and 2018 election cycles. As we noted, certain systemic “corrections” now also seem to be coming into play.

So, just as in 1964 and 1965, many people are waiting to see if the “rule of law” in 2019 will finally win out. The hope is that the U.S. system will continue to offer alternatives that provide the means to correct inequities that are violations to our laws and the constitution. For as long as those types of options exist in the United States, and in other countries and regions which follow our model, aberrant behavior which may be violating laws has the potential to be corrected and brought back to the mainstream. In the case of the Mueller investigations, the question remains: Can the rule of law, that is, the U.S. system of government, ultimately perform the job it was intended to do? Like most reality shows, the whole world will be watching and waiting for the outcome.