Political polarization is creeping from the executive and legislative branches to the judiciary – fueling a dangerous level of tension in government.
CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS.
It’s a phrase that’s been thrown around a lot on cable TV and in the halls of Congress since America sent to the Oval Office a flamboyant businessman who has been both reviled and revered for his iconoclastic view of Washington norms and institutions. But the release of a redacted report by special counsel Robert Mueller has brought the concern to a new level, setting the country up for what legal scholars say is an unprecedented test of the separation of powers central to the nation’s very democracy.
“We do, certainly, have a great potential for a constitutional clash here, with the executive branch asserting the authority to be free of oversight, in complete contravention to the understood role of Congress in ensuring adherence to the rule of law by the administration,” says Caroline Fredrickson, president of the American Constitution Society.
“We don’t want to have a situation where the three-legged stool gets out of balance,” Fredrickson adds, referring to the checks and balances of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government.
View the complete April 19 article by Susan Milligan on The U.S. News and World Report website here.