The Coming Constitutional Crisis

The Coming Constitutional Crisis

 

Created September 17, 1787 and ratified June 21, 1788, the Constitution of the United States, on which representative democracy is based, has long stood the test of time. It replaced the 1777 Articles of Confederation, which proved unworkable as the result of Shay’s Rebellion in Massachusetts, the preceding year. Born of this crisis in the early years of our republic, it has been the foundation of what it means to be an American, and is the oldest constitution in the entire world still in use- an attest to its brilliance in forming a government of, by and for the people. Following the first ten amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, created September 25, 1789 and ratified December 15, 1791, it has been amended an additional seventeen times- amendments which have also proved, with the exception of the 18th Amendment, to be lasting.

Since its inception, there have been a few occasions in which there occurred a constitutional crisis. Most notable was the constitutional crisis of 1861, where eleven states seceded from the Union, to form the Confederate States of America. This secession brought about the deadliest war in the history of the United States, as well as the Western Hemisphere, as civil wars throughout the world very often do prove to be so deadly. Another constitutional crisis erupted in 1937, when President Franklin Roosevelt attempted to pack the Supreme Court, which unanimously struck down FDR’s National Recovery Act, two years prior. Yet another constitutional crisis in 1974 brought about the resignation of President Nixon, following the Watergate scandal. Since then, the Constitution has been occasionally tested, most notably in 1998, when President Clinton obstructed justice and perjured himself in Clinton vs Jones that previous year, which resulted in the second impeachment of a President in US history.

This week, on the 25th of June, Speaker of the House John Boehner announced that he is introducing legislation to allow the House of Representatives to sue President Obama for his refusal to execute our laws, for exceeding his constitutional authority in the use of his executive actions, and for his continuous attempts to bypass Congress. This confrontation has been slowly percolating since prior to Obama’s re-election and has, in the wake of the border crisis and many other brewing scandals, begun to boil over into a crisis within our federal government. Already, the Supreme Court has unanimously ruled against the president twice, in his attempt to make recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board without consent of the Senate, and in his attempt to have the National Security Agency monitor the cellular telephones of American citizens without due process.

Now it will ultimately be left to the courts to rule as to whether Speaker Boehner, at the behest of Congress, has legal standing to proceed with this lawsuit- perhaps and potentially the most important litigation in the history of our republic. If Boehner is successful, then the constitutional balance of powers, outlined in the Constitution’s first three articles, will remain intact. If Boehner fails in his attempt to curtail Obama’s overreach, then this delicate balance of power on which our nation has survived, will forever be lost and this president will have destroyed representative government as we know it. Under such a contingency, future presidents would become de facto dictators, and the legislative branch of government will be emasculated to the extent of outright impotence, rendering the United States Constitution irrelevant, thus completing the hidden agenda of Barack Obama and his nefarious allies.

-Drew Nickell, 27 June 2014

 

© 2014, by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved