4 FEB 2017
tiny american civics lesson for those here and abroad who woke up going “uh, so the travel ban is lifted because one judge in seattle said so? I mean, cool, but really?”
Originally posted by dziesiemdziesiat
well, yeah.
that’s how the whole fucking system is supposed to work.
we’ve got 3 parts to how laws are made and enforced in America: Executive (the president), Judicial (the court system), and Legislative (Congress).
I know we’ve not done a good job in the past few weeks showing this, but it is a system of checks and balances. we were very much explicitly not supposed to ever have a king or a king-like executive. that’s why it took them so fucking long to write the founding documents, because there weren’t many good examples of that method, at the time.
Originally posted by spnassbuttsunited
anyway, the president can do stuff with executive orders (though tr**p has very much overreached, surprising nobody), and then the other two parts of the wobbly-ass tri-corner hat holding up the rule of American law get to exact checks and balances against it.
right now? It’s the judiciary branch going “hey there slow your roll you unmitigated disaster of an executive branch.”
Originally posted by rockstarbarista
sometimes, if Congress can get 2/3 of them to agree, they can do much the same thing, but I currently heavily identify with:
Anyway if the three don’t agree (for example, this morning), we end up with a situation called a “constitutional crisis,” which, despite sounding like a lost Hamilton song, is actually a large problem that’s gonna be a shitshow to sort out (andhopefullyendsupwithSOMEONEgettingimpeached).
but we can have this shitshow, because we don’t have a king. we never have, we never were supposed to, and yeah it’s been an awful two weeks of us remembering that we don’t, but hey! the american rule of law! it was vaguely well put together!
Originally posted by popeyeloops
(another side of this philosophy is that, you know, we get to hit the voting booths EVERY YEAR, GO VOTE EVERY TIME, MY GOD, and also, impeachment doesn’t involve beheading someone)
civics lessons completed.