Although there is much more to be learned about the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol, the motives of the participants can be gleaned from their own statements. Like far-right movements everywhere today, the insurrectionists were driven by resentment of others’ emancipation. Social transformation has been sufficient to generate the rage and resentment over phantom possessions that characterize far-right movements everywhere. An act of destruction can be used to prove that something is one’s own. For example, this psychological dynamic becomes horrendously clear when men decide to kill or disfigure the women they claim to love rather than tolerate their emancipation. By Jan-Werner Mueller.
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Results for US Constitution
Friday 7 January 2022
Princeton, USA
Thursday 18 March 2021
London, United Kingdom
It is curious that presidents possess such unaccountable power at all. America’s founders rejected absolute monarchy and its trappings (such as noble titles), and yet the pardon power is descended from just such a monarchical power, the royal prerogative of mercy. Trump’s blatant violation of the original intent of the presidential pardon was just one of many challenges he posed to the political system established by the US Constitution. Johnson displays similarly worrying traits. Faced with such threats, courts and legislatures need to recall their true purpose: preventing the unchecked exercise of executive power. By Nicholas Reed Langen.
Monday 26 October 2020
Chicago, USA
Throughout US President Donald Trump's first term, there has been constant hand wringing over a "constitutional crisis" that never arrived. The irony is that an administration led by Joe Biden would almost certainly confront such a crisis, owing to Trump's transformation of the Supreme Court into a right-wing redoubt. A constitutional crisis, properly understood as a turning point that might lead to collapse or transformation of the system, has not occurred. But such a crisis does now appear increasingly likely. By Eric Posner.
