Stoned

The Importance of Maintaining an Independent Judiciary

Perhaps the most important part of maintaining democratic values and liberalism in a society is an independent judiciary. Judges, attorneys, jurors and other members of the court system are expected to deliver blind justice, answering only to the law itself. In “a more perfect union,” the rule of law applies to everybody equally. Every court from the Supreme Court, down to smaller district courts, is expected to treat everyone equal under the law. Recent events around one of President Trump’s campaign members, Roger Stone, have shown a breach in this tenet. This breach has followed a pattern of other occurrences in which this administration has forcibly opened the eyes of justice to bias. If continued, the separation of powers will cease to exist and the institutional fabric of the United States will be destroyed.

Roger Stone is one of almost a dozen members of President Trump’s 2016 campaign team that are convicted felons. Roger Stone, was convicted of witness tampering and lying to congress. These charges were related to the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia and the investigation that followed. The Department of Justice (DoJ) recommended a seven to nine year prison sentence for Stone. The President then proceeded to tweet his opposition to the sentencing and Attorney General Bill Barr overruled the prosecutors’ recommendation. This act of the AG to do a judicial favor for the President should not be taken lightly for a number of reasons.

The Judicial Branch is meant to be independent. This meddling by the President and the AG set bad precedent. If this becomes the norm, the President and his allies in his campaign and the GOP will be able to engage in criminal activity without fear of true accountability. Stone will still get prison time, sure, but only after the President has had a say. This is banana republic type stuff. The justice community was so taken aback by the executive meddling that the entire prosecution team on the case resigned, and over 1000 former DoJ officials called on AG Barr to resign.

“Such behavior is a grave threat to the fair administration of justice. In this nation, we are all equal before the law. A person should not be given special treatment in a criminal prosecution because they are a close political ally of the President. Governments that use the enormous power of law enforcement to punish their enemies and reward their allies are not constitutional republics; they are autocracies.”

-Letter from the DoJ officials calling for Barr’s resignation

These DoJ officials served both Republican and Democrat administrations. Bipartisan warnings of this magnitude need to be taken seriously by us as residents of the United States. They are the canary in the coal mine for our democracy.

If we fail to heed this warning and push back through elections and protests, who will be there to speak for us when judicial bias comes for us. Who is to say, the President will not demand harsher penalties for people who disagree with him and at the same time request leniency with his criminal allies? If there is no unbiased accountability for the actions of the executive branch, than the separation of powers between them and the judicial branch evaporate. Our justice system would become no better than authoritarian regimes or classical monarchies that plague and have plagued humanity for millenia. Of course, it is easy to argue that justice for everyday people is not applied fairly as it is. Different groups in society have been treated unfairly since the founding of the nation. Now imagine this type of justice on a more macro level. A level in which there is very little accountability at the highest levels of our government. How long does it last before executive power is used to undo all the good that has been done over the past two and a half centuries of progress? That is something that should worry you no matter where on the political spectrum you fall.

The Rule of Law is something to be cherished. No president has ever done more to erode it. The GOP covered for him during the impeachment trial and now he is seeing how far he can do with executive power. I long for a United States where, once again, everyone is equal under the law, including the chief executive. That is how it has always been.