Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) agrees with Democrats that the future of democracy may be at stake in the upcoming elections, but in a way opinion article published in the Wall Street Journal he says the biggest threat is posed by liberals who want to bury democratic accountability under bureaucracy.
“In all three branches of the federal government, liberals are working to undermine democratic accountability over their exercise of power. His philosophy of the administrative state has a common thread: the abrogation of democratic legitimacy in deference to unelected bureaucrats,” he wrote in an opinion piece published this week.
The Senate GOP leader pointed to intensifying Democratic pressure on the Supreme Court to adopt an enforceable code of conduct in response to press reports about lavish gifts and hospitality accepted by conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, as well as activism politics of these judges. spouses.
Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats pressured Alito to recuse himself from cases involving former President Trump after two flags associated with the Jan. 6, 2021, effort to overturn the results of the last presidential election were displayed at the judge’s Virginia home and in New York. Jersey beach house.
“As the court has held for decades, refusal is a judicial act. It is not, as Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said in response to my criticism, ‘an administrative matter,’” McConnell wrote.
“This misunderstanding permeates efforts to force ethics ‘reform’ on the high court. Liberals complain that the court’s binding ethics rules lack an “enforcement mechanism” to ensure they refuse when they choose. But this denunciation would throw the Constitution out the window,” he argued.
McConnell claims that Article III of the Constitution grants judicial power to the court itself and that Democrats are trampling on the court’s independence and the constitutional separation of powers by wanting a “bureaucracy to ‘administer’ it”.
“This unfounded trust in bureaucrats also undermines democratic legitimacy in the executive branch,” McConnell wrote, noting Attorney General Merrick Garland’s decision to appoint special counsels to investigate criminal allegations against President Biden and former President Trump.
But he argued that the proceedings should be conducted under the direct authority of the attorney general, who is appointed by the sitting president, in order to maximize the “democratic accountability” of these proceedings.
“I don’t doubt Mr. Garland’s sincerity when he says that moving prosecutors out of the chain of command makes them ‘independent.’ The problem is the underlying assumption that prosecutors should be independent. Such an agreement insulates them from democratic accountability,” McConnell wrote.
He argues that a federal process is legitimate to the extent that it is “vested” in the executive branch headed by an elected official.
“Up and down the Justice Department chain of command, decisions are, and should be, made by people who answer to the president and the Senate,” he said.
“The responsibility lies with the attorney general because he, through the president, is responsible to the voters. Liberals seem to struggle with this reality,” he wrote.
And McConnell says liberals have externalized their legislative power for decades, allowing unelected executive branch officials to fill in the regulatory details of laws enacted under the Chevron doctrine, under which courts have traditionally deferred to federal agencies’ interpretations of laws. ambiguous.
McConnell noted that he has filed a legal brief in support of overturning Chevron’s deference because he sees it as a “power grab” by the Washington bureaucracy.
“The Constitution gives each branch of the federal government exclusive power, which is accountable to the people in elections. In every branch, liberals seek to remove this power from democratic accountability and assign it to unelected bureaucrats,” he wrote.
“This practice may result from a good faith trust in ‘experts’ or from a sincere belief that sound policy is too valuable to risk in elections. But, in essence, it is a rejection of democratic accountability in favor of the administrative State”, he argued.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
