Clog collapses I-Law – extinction

Indeed, the Supreme Court does need to be limited to its proper role. But when it comes to our engagement with the world, that role involves taking a stand, not stepping aside. The reason for this is straightforward: the court is in charge of interpreting the Constitution, and the Constitution plays a major role in shaping our engagement with the rest of the world. The court therefore has no choice about whether to involve itself in the question of which direction the Constitution will face; it is now unavoidably involved. Even choosing to defer to the other branches of government amounts to a substantive stand on the question.

That said, when the court exercises its own independent political judgment, it still does so in a distinctively legal way. For one thing, the court can act only through deciding the cases that happen to come before it, and the court is limited to using the facts and circumstances of those cases to shape a broader constitutional vision. The court also speaks in the idiom of law -- which is to say, of regular rules that apply to everyone across the board. It cannot declare, for instance, that only this or that detainee has rights. It must hold that the same rights extend to every detainee who is similarly situated. This, too, is an effective constraint on the way the court exercises its policy judgment. Indeed, it is this very regularity that gives its decisions legitimacy as the product of judicial logic and reasoning.

Why We Need More Law, More Than Ever

So what do we need the Constitution to do for us now? The answer, I think, is that the Constitution must be read to help us remember that while the war on terror continues, we are also still in the midst of a period of rapid globalization. An enduring lesson of the Bush years is the extreme difficulty and cost of doing things by ourselves. We need to build and rebuild alliances -- and law has historically been one of our best tools for doing so. In our present precarious situation, it would be a terrible mistake to abandon our historic position of leadership in the global spread of the rule of law.

Our leadership matters for reasons both universal and national. Seen from the perspective of the world, the fragmentation of power after the cold war creates new dangers of disorder that need to be mitigated by the sense of regularity and predictability that only the rule of law can provide. Terrorists need to be deterred. Failed states need to be brought under the umbrella of international organizations so they can govern themselves. And economic interdependence demands coordination, so that the collapse of one does not become the collapse of all.

From a national perspective, our interest is less in the inherent value of advancing individual rights than in claiming that our allies are obligated to help us by virtue of legal commitments they have made. The Bush administration's lawyers often insisted that law was a tool of the weak, and that therefore as a strong nation we had no need to engage it. But this notion of ''lawfare'' as a threat to the United States is based on a misunderstanding of the very essence of how law operates.

Law comes into being and is sustained not because the weak demand it but because it is a tool of the powerful -- as it has been for the United States since World War II at least. The reason those with power prefer law to brute force is that it regularizes and legitimates the exercise of authority. It is easier and cheaper to get the compliance of weaker people or states by promising them rules and a fair hearing than by threatening them constantly with force. After all, if those wielding power really objected to the rule of law, they could abolish it, the way dictators and juntas have often done the world over.

On those occasions when the weak, using the machinery of courts, are able to vindicate their legal rights, the reason their demands are honored is generally that those who have the most influence in the system recognize it is in their own long-term interest to make the concession. Those who consider law a tool of the weak mistake these rare trade-offs for defeat, when — from the perspective of power — they are simply part of the cost of doing business. This is why, for example, the police and prosecutors embrace the Miranda warnings: they require that defendants be read their rights. But once the formality is satisfied, it is almost guaranteed that the defendants’ statements will be admissible into evidence.