The Bigliest Legal Educator Ever, Trump

I had never heard the word ‘movant,’ but now, thanks to our dear leader, I know what it means. It refers to one who files a motion in a legal matter… a slightly broader term than plaintiff or defendant, perhaps because it’s usually their lawyer, not literally themselves.

And a few years ago, I wouldn’t have known what ‘emolument’ was but now I see examples of it in real-life context almost every day. This one means ‘any sort of stuff that makes you feel better,’ and the founding fathers used it instead of saying ‘bribe’ or ‘money’ or ‘gift,’ because they were actually a bit more professorial in language than us, and they wanted a word that was broader… so it did not limit itself to any one grift. So ‘emolument’ is almost like body lotion, and the dear leader slathers himself in others’ money almost daily. An airplane one day, some crypto another, or maybe he can even get himself a little country like Greenland or Iceland or Canadaland… one of those trinkets.

And I also now know of the existence of the US Court of International Trade (who knew?!) … and the Alien Enemies Act… and I have a greater appreciation for the urgency of habeas corpus… and some great examples of quid pro quo, instead of it just being a dead language. The Latin alone has been an amazing education. Oh, and speaking of dead language, I now know what a dead letter is, as in “Laws are dead letter if there’s no rules and regulations.” I can’t exactly remember the first time I heard it, but I think judge Cannon in Florida was great at causing dead letters.

And it’s all thanks to our dear leader. He brings the law to life in a way that no one has ever done. I’ve got to imagine some of this goes back to his own education, where, sitting upon his father’s knee he learned to sift through all the legal mumbo jumbo and find anything that can turn the law into a cudgel against its own enforcement. The purpose isn’t necessarily the hope that your charade will prevail; it will succeed even if it just extends the process. If you have more money than the other guy, you will win by endurance. They will run out of air. And if they’re gaining traction, the pièce de résistance is to pile on a new offense before the first one is adjudicated, sort of overlapping the cases to quickly suffocate them.

At a grander level, we’ve learned that impeachment, our emergency system for a runaway president, is — like most emergency systems — unmaintained, broken, and useless when you need it. (I worked in insurance for a bit, so this is more of a fact than cynicism.) But it’s been rendered useless mostly by our ossified congress, so that’s a problem beyond the scope of this rant.

But far and away, the biggest legal lesson he’s taught is this: all of our most important ‘laws,’ — the things in the Constitution that we thought all along were laws — weren’t really laws at all. They are all supported only by trust, not by force of law. And that trust is judged — in the slowest possible way — by our courts, who, again, have no force of law. Well, that isn’t exactly true. They can use a lot of force against you or me; they just can’t use it particularly well against the people we elected, and almost not at all against the most important person we elected.

I am delighted to have had this education.

Postscript: Speaking of laws an legality, I have a law to suggest. It should be a crime, of the highest order, against the United States of America to wear a mask, hood, or any means of obscuring your identity in the act of arresting any person, in the name of any level of government, in the United States.