A constant in recent MAGA legal reasoning at the USSC is use of law as a means to authoritarian ends by the six Republicans. Such weaponization converts the law from from a system of neutral principles binding more or less on all into a tool for advancing partisan political agendas or private benefits. The consequences ripple through every foundation of democratic society, including morality, democratic institutions, and the rule of law itself.
When law becomes weaponized for partisan purposes, it loses its pro-democracy moral authority. The law's legitimacy comes mostly from the idea that it represents a system of neutral, impartial principles. The law has intrinsic moral value because it structures political, commercial, and social relationships around principles of even-handedness and predictability.
Democracy and the law requires institutions that operate independently of corrupting partisan and special interest influence, particularly those responsible for accountability and justice. Judicial independence is a fundamental guarantee of a fair trial. That helps ensure that courts remain accountable to the Constitution and laws, not to politicians, demagogues, ideologies or special interests. When legal institutions are captured for partisan ends, independence is lost.
Unprincipled, dishonest MAGA judging
An article published by The New Republic discusses an example of the unprincipled, dishonest legal reasoning. MAGA USSC judges now routinely resort to this deplorable state of affairs when facts and principled, honest legal reasoning cannot lead to partisan MAGA outcomes. The article focuses on Chief Justice John Roberts weaponization Federalist No. 70 to enable and protect a unitary president who is above the law.
The bit about putting Trump above the law came in the 2024 USSC decision in Trump v. US, which granted broad immunity from prosecution of crimes a president commits while in office. In essence, Trump cannot be prosecuted for committing crimes while he is in office, including serious felonies. The legal reasoning to support that grievous wound on our democracy and rule of law is based on lies and dishonest reasoning that Roberts dreamed up to support his vision of a corrupt American dictator.
In granting above the law status to a US president, Roberts intentionally misinterpreted Alexander Hamilton's Federalist No. 70. He had to do that to justify creating an authoritarian vision of presidential supremacy, now called the unitary executive. In Trump v. US, the grant of criminal immunity for crimes in office actually upends Hamilton's commentary about executive accountability. Advocates of unitary-executive theory, including Roberts, have weaponized select phrases in Federalist No. 70 regarding "energy in the executive" and "decision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch". MAGA elites and Roberts use those comments to argue for essentially unrestrainable presidential power. That completely ignores Hamilton's equal emphasis on accountability mechanisms to restrain a rogue president.
Hamilton never argued for a unitary president like what Roberts and the other five MAGA USSC judges now support. In an earlier 2020 case, Seila Law v. CFPB, Roberts falsely claimed that Hamilton viewed legislative power as a "special threat to individual liberty" while treating the executive as uniquely democratic. He just made that up. That directly contradicts Hamilton's text, which only observed that legislative debate, while sometimes obstructive, promotes deliberation and circumspection as checks on majority excesses. Hamilton never characterized Congress as a major threat. Roberts himself made up that unprincipled falsehood himself.
In his criminal immunity decision, Roberts cherry-picked Hamilton's comments about presidential "vigor" while ignoring passages about the need to keep a president restrained and accountable. He also decontextualized quotes in Seila Law. There, Roberts used Hamilton's warning about "jarrings of parties" in a plural executive (not a unitary executive) as if it applied to legislative-executive separation of powers. What the unprincipled, authoritarian Roberts did was to claim a need for presidential immunity, calling it a constitutional necessity. But in fact no such necessity exists. He asserted that prosecution would paralyze the presidency, but that was a claim that Hamilton never made. Only Roberts and the other five MAGA USSC judges make that claim.
Authoritarian MAGA legal reasoning asserts that presidential immunity exists because MAGA wants to build an unaccountable unitary executive with dictator-level power. The constitution itself does not provide a compelling case that a US president needs to have immunity for crimes he commits while in office. So, MAGA judges simply made up an unpersuasive reason for immunity.
Are they really that ignorant?
The TNR article comments that the Heritage Foundation's Kevin Roberts (an important Project 2025 author) celebrated the Trump immunity decision by telling Americans to read No. 70 over Independence Day. He apparently believe that text, which is not part of the US Constitution, supports the idea of an American dictatorship. That text argues the opposite of what Roberts wants us to celebrate. Readers of Federalist No. 70 will find that Hamilton's clear intent was to explain why the presidency ought to be be constrained by the rule of law, not freed from it as Roberts and the other MAGA judges have done.
Hamilton's presidency was envisioned as energetic yet prosecutable. That contradicts Roberts' invented presidential immunity holding. Roberts' vision makes presidents "sacred and inviolable" like the British kings Hamilton explicitly rejected.
It is also worth noting that nothing in the US Constitution explicitly says that a president is above the law and not accountable for their crimes. That is a cynical fabrication. It was made up by activist authoritarian MAGA judges in their quest to kill democracy and the rule of law. They need to do that to establish a deeply corrupt, American authoritarian MAGA state.
