11/23/17
Unlike that ingrate Benjamin Wittes, I’m feeling very thankful this Thanksgiving.
Suddenly, complacency is replaced with activism.
Prominent conservative attorneys and legal scholars are having a mind-meld with their political opposite numbers about the importance of the Constitution’s basic features: separation of powers, an independent judiciary, religious liberty, freedom of speech, and due process of law.
Card-carrying members of the #resist movement follow and even retweet Bill Kristol with glee.
Some of us have gotten better at distinguishing mountains from molehills, notwithstanding that eerie Maya Angelou quote about believing someone the first time when they show you who they are.
We recite the Constitution to one another and know all about the two flavors of the once-obscure Emoluments Clause.
Although norms about the reach and limits of executive power used to be buried some boring old White House Counsel memo passed down through 40 years of bipartisan administrations, suddenly everyone knows it’s not cool for the White House to be in direct contact with the DOJ about a pending matter.
Even young’uns born after 1973 now know that the Saturday Night Massacre isn’t just the name of a deathcore band.
The people have discovered their Office of Government Ethics and have rallied to save it.
Ditto the independent Congressional Budget Office and its apolitical scoring of pending legislation.
People have learned their Congressmembers’ names, memorized their phone numbers, and figured out where and when to show up at thingies called Town Halls.
They’ve discovered the notice-and-comment period for proposed federal regulations under the Administrative Procedures Act.
After decades of fratricidal fighting, Blacks and Jews have finally reunited against their common enemy.
People have begun to love lawyers!
And millennials!
We’ve begun to study regimes with authoritarian tendencies! in actual foreign countries with real-live foreigners living in them, like #Hungary, #Poland, #Turkey, and #Venezuela! As if they actually mattered, as if we had something to learn from them!
State Attorney Generals are cool. Hell, State AG’s exist! 50 of ‘em! One of them even has a nickname from Trump!
The states provide a vertical form of checks and balances under our federalist system. Who knew?
There’s no such thing as an “off-year” election anymore. People show up in droves. People realize that odd-year local races for governor, mayor, state and local legislators have more impact on their day-to-day lives than that thing that happens every 4 years and gets hyped by the media for 3 years and 364 days beforehand.
If they live in cities or states with an overwhelming majority of registered voters of one party, and that state’s system requires registration in a party to vote in a primary, they now know they need to vote in a primary to have any impact on who’s actually going to run their state and local government.
People stick up for – and even pay for – real journalism. They can detect both fake news and “fake news.” They know what to do about trolls, they know what doxing is, and if they’re really good, they can spot the difference between bots and #MAGAbots.
Yes, I am very thankful this year. I hope to be half as thankful again next year!
Lesley Rosenthal practices law in NYC and teaches it in Cambridge. Follow her @GoodCounselBook and @LetUSROL.
Great post!