The rule of law is at the heart of America

Open this photo in gallery:

No one is above the law, and no one is beneath it. That, at its heart, is what the rule of law means. It is a foundational principle of the United States, as it is of Canada and other democracies. Yet U.S. President Donald Trump is actively undermining it in his call for the impeachment of judges who challenge his actions and in his reprisals against lawyers and law firms that stand up to him.

Something very ugly is happening. It is precisely the kind of thing the U.S. Constitution was designed to prevent – to restrain momentary passions through a deliberative system of checks and balances.

One of the passions of the moment is the perceived need to repel illegal immigrants. To that end, Mr. Trump has invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. That law allows for the detention or deportation of the citizens of an enemy nation during a time of declared war or an invasion. Until now, it has been invoked just three times – during wartime only – and helped set in motion the shameful detention of Japanese-Americans, including U.S. citizens, during the Second World War. (Canada shared that particular shame when it interned Japanese-Canadians.) Such were the misguided passions of that moment.

To state the obvious, there is no war and no invasion. But when Mr. Trump opted for this national emergency-style procedure, his administration shipped more than 200 Venezuelans to an El Salvadoran jail – many of them under the Alien Enemies Act, with no court hearing. It should be no surprise that Chief Judge James Boasberg of the D.C. District Court ruled that the deportations made solely under the Alien Enemies Act needed to be halted, at least temporarily.

Even under the wartime law, individuals have a right to a hearing so they can argue they are not gang members at all, he ruled, citing Supreme Court precedent. (His ruling has now been upheld by an appeals court.) This group also deserved a chance to argue they were at risk of likely torture at the jail, he said. What’s more, the government deported some of the Venezuelans in the hours before a scheduled hearing, suggesting to the judge a deliberate attempt to evade the court’s authority.

Cue the mobbing of an independent judiciary, led by Mr. Trump. He called the judge a “radical left lunatic,” and demanded he be impeached, a demand so out of place in a democratic state it prompted Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to issue a rare statement saying appellate review, not impeachment, is the appropriate response to a disagreement over a judge’s decision.

That didn’t deter the mob. Elon Musk called for “a wave of impeachments” – judges have blocked, at least temporarily, roughly two dozen executive actions. The Republican-led House is to hold hearings on Chief Judge Boasberg, and Speaker Mike Johnson has mused about defunding courts. Attorney General Pam Bondi, whose job it is to know better, piled on. Stephen Miller, a presidential aide, tweeted, about judges generally: “Under what theory of the constitution does a single marxist judge in San Francisco have the same executive power as the Commander-in-Chief elected by the whole nation to lead the executive branch?”

The answer to Mr. Miller’s question is easy enough to find – in the Declaration of Independence, which includes this grievance against King George III: “He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices.”

The judges are separate and independent. The law, the constitution, is supreme. It has been that way for centuries in America. Under what theory is “executive power” a licence to ship individuals to possible, or even likely, torture abroad without a hearing? Judicial power is protected by the U.S. Constitution, just as executive power is.

The independence of lawyers and the legal community is, like judicial independence, a basic principle of democracies, but Mr. Trump has issued executive orders refusing certain lawyers and law firms entry to government buildings and barring companies with federal contracts from hiring them.

Countries where judicial independence and impartial justice do not meaningfully exist, such as China or Russia, are tyrannies. These are not places where businesses can be confident of neutral resolution of conflict, or where individuals can feel they had a fair hearing.

If America becomes a country no longer trusted for impartial justice – is it still America?