The Rule of Law Shouldn’t be bent

Published 7:03 pm Tuesday, October 14, 2014

You can’t really blame someone for being starstruck — even if she’s a star herself. But actress Gwyneth Paltrow’s gushing about President Barack Obama at a fundraiser last week deserves a little attention. Her words demonstrate the dangers of treating elected officials like celebrities, and putting our faith in people, rather than institutions.

“Oscar-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow can’t get enough of her commander-in-chief,” CNN reported last week. “Hosting a fundraiser for President Barack Obama at her Los Angeles home on Thursday, Paltrow revealed that she is in fact the President’s ‘biggest’ fan — and it’s not just because of his policies.”

She said he was “so handsome that I can’t speak properly.”

That’s just celebrities buying into celebrity culture. What’s truly disturbing, however, is her later statement.

“It would be wonderful if we were able to give this man all of the power that he needs to pass the things that he needs to pass,” she said.

Let’s look at that statement. It’s a clear rejection of the rule of law, in favor of the rule of man — at least, of one man, as it’s inconceivable Ms. Paltrow would say the same of, say, George W. Bush.

Author Matthew Spaulding has written about the rule of law and how it shaped the U.S. Constitution.

“Throughout most of human history, the rules by which life was governed were usually determined by force and fraud: he who had the power — whether military strength or political dominance — made the rules,” he wrote in his book, “We Still Hold These Truths.” “The command of the absolute monarch or tyrannical despot was the rule and had the coercive force of the law.”

The Founders of the United States rejected this model for the Enlightenment’s vision of the rule of law.

“In America THE LAW IS KING,” wrote Thomas Paine. “For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.”

Adds Spaulding, “The classic American expression of the idea comes from the pen of John Adams when he wrote the Massachusetts Constitution in 1780, in which the powers of the commonwealth are divided in the document ‘to the end it may be a government of laws, not of men.’ It is hard to come up with a simpler definition.”

Essentially, what Ms. Paltrow is arguing is that Obama should be given the power to override the will of not only Congress and the Courts, but also of the public.

Which might be fine, if President Obama wasn’t human.

As James Madison said, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

That’s why we have the separation of powers.