No king here

 

Perhaps because I'm currently located near this residue of our anti-monarchist past, I find myself enraged by Donald Trump's claim of a king's immunity for his crimes. We got rid of that ... they threw the tea into the harbor and smuggled in untaxed supplies. And later dumped the King.

I'm not alone in my rage. See this letter to Washington Post: 

Why are we even having a discussion about whether former president Donald Trump’s sweeping claims of immunity are justified? Didn’t we fight the Revolutionary War in part because we didn’t want to be governed by an all-powerful king? Somehow, we’ve traveled far from our original vision and ended up with a former president who wants to be seen as a supreme monarch and as a law unto himself with unlimited powers. Incredibly, the Supreme Court (including its staunchly originalist members) is giving this vision a sober hearing. It is disturbing that the court would take such claims seriously, even if it does reject them in the end. ... Vic Bermudez, Springfield

More soberly, New York Times columnist and conservative legal eagle David French spells it all out. (Link is unlocked.) 

... it’s difficult to understand the structure of the Constitution without understanding it as a small-r republican rebuke to royal authority. The American colonists had seen the danger of concentrated royal power — including royal immunities — and set about demolishing that power, comprehensively and thoroughly.

It’s doubtful that Louis XIV actually uttered the famous quote attributed to him, “L’état, c’est moi” — which roughly translates to “I am the state” — but it does accurately describe what European royal authority was like at its height. The king was the nation’s most powerful warrior, lawmaker, judge and priest. His word was law, and there was no law above his word.

In fact, the modern concept of sovereign immunity, which protects federal and state governments from suit, is rooted in the common law British concept “that the king could do no wrong.” The National Association of Attorneys General roots this doctrine in “the king’s position at the ‘apex of the feudal pyramid.’”

But our president isn’t at the apex of any pyramid. He may possess immense power as the nation’s chief executive, but he is not the law. He swears allegiance to the law, to the Constitution itself. And the text of that Constitution systematically strips royal prerogatives from any person and from every branch of government.

... If Americans want to provide the president with a version of the royal immunity that protected the monarchs of old, they can choose to do so through a constitutional amendment. Otherwise, presidents should remain subject to the rule of law, and not simply when they’re engaged in private conduct.

If the corrupt Supremes insist Donald Trump enjoys the immunities of a king, a goodly majority of us are likely to join our forbears in wondering: "when in the course of human events ..."