amicus curiæ

Quoting Nixon’s national security adviser Henry Kissinger, the nominee to the US Supreme Court’s 1988 Columbia University yearbook entry was, “The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.”
Though the seriousness of this tag-line is up for speculation and probably understood to be satirical by legal-eagles of the time, no one is yet bothering to scour the earnestness of the claim that the justice in the wings is calling Dear Leader’s disdain for the judiciary demoralising. I wonder, if like the vice-president’s attestation that Russia was behind the hacking attack or that climate change was a reality or that sorry-not-sorry chiding given for turning the office of the president into the Home-Shopping Network, this is an insincere lunge for independent and critical though that’s merely meant to make these abnormal times seem more palatable.