the TRIBUNICIAN

Popular Political Polarization: An Ailment Demands a Cure

The polarized binary of the current American political landscape as represented in the rise of simplified, hostile, and divisive political messaging needs to end. The virtues of informed debate and deliberation gifted us with the Constitution. The dangers of factions within the electorate were explored in Federalist #10 during the public debates on whether the Constitution should replace the Articles of Confederation.

There is a relevant Roman historical and political precedent in the polarized binary of the Optimates and Populares factions in the period of the late Roman republic. After the Punic Wars, Rome had no true near-peer international competitor and a lack of opportunity for relatively easy territorial expansion. This led to the Romans redirecting their collective restless and competitive energy inward in a cannibalistic fashion. Ultimately their republic was devoured and in its place was left an empire.

The position of this article is that the increasingly hyper-partisan political environment in the United States is neither sustainable nor healthy for the American republic. A proposed solution for this issue is systemic electoral reform with the goal of creating a multiparty system by encouraging State-level structural and procedural changes in their electoral systems.

Unitary Executive Power: Unchecked and Imbalanced

The increasingly imbalanced power dynamic of the unitary American executive branch in comparison to the other branches, especially as embodied since the 1933 Roosevelt administration, needs to be corrected. The merits of the unitary executive model for the American republic were first popularly explored in Federalist #70 with its focus on the promotion of that model in contrast to the alternative, the plural executive model, that had failed to gain support at the Philadelphia Convention of 1787.

There are pertinent Roman historical and political precedents in the gradual decrease in the plural executive features of the dual Consulate and its eventual transformation into the authoritarian unitary executive model as seen in the late Roman republic beginning with Scipio the Younger and then Sulla and Marius, continuing with Pompey and Julius Caesar, and culminating with Augustus Caesar and his imperial successors all but abolishing the dual Consulate.

The position of this article is that the diminishing legitimacy of both republics' executive branch prerequisite norms led to individuals being elected to the highest executive positions who did and do not respect or have an interest in maintaining traditional conceptual and normative checks on their power. A possible solution proposed for this contemporary issue in the American context is the creation of an American Federal plural executive.

Declining Judicial Credibility: Auto-Judicial Delegitimization

The politicization and the weaponization of the American judicial system in general, and of the Supreme Court in particular has created a crisis of credibility with the American electorate. This progressively worsening trend needs to be stopped and the damage repaired. The structure and scope of the federal judiciary, as defined in Article II of the Constitution was first formally presented and explained in Federalist #78, where it was unironically labeled “the least dangerous” of the three proposed branches.

There is an applicable Roman historical precedent in the various courts of Rome being used as weapons against political foes and as an ex post facto tool of legitimization and condemnation for past political actions in the late Roman republic. This trend was most aptly embodied by the exile of Cicero, and more so by legalized murders that were the “proscriptions” of both Sulla and his spiritual successors, the Second Triumvirate.

The position of this article is that the damaged credibility of the federal judicial system in general can begin to be repaired in particular by making fundamental changes to the structure of the Supreme Court. A plausible beginning to this solution would be twofold; term limits for Supreme Court Justices and the creation of new methods that would normalize the replacement of Justices in a predictable and regular fashion as their terms end.