By Mike Magee
The death of the Pope interrupted an epic battle between Trump and the rest of the civilized world about whether the United States remains a society “under the law.” Critic for the rule of law is the principle of “Due process“As described in not one, but in two amendments to our Constitution.
The fifth amendment establishes that no inhabitant will be “deprived of life, freedom or property without due legal process.”
The fourteenth amendment, ratified after civil war and emancipation, uses the same eleven words, called “Due process“Describe a legal obligation of all states.
By arrogantly ignoring any claim or “Due process” Last week, deporting the defendants (but not tested) to the gang member, Kilmar Abrego García, to a superior security prison in El Salvador along with 220, and ignoring a court order to return the planes while he is still on the legal Flight. This was a bridge too far, only for some of its political supporters in Congress.
With that case still in litigation, the administration tried to repeat the advertising trick with another group of accused foreigners last weekend and the Supreme Court was slapped in a unanimous decision.
What Trump is learning in the difficult way is that without “Due process” The law professional could also hang his tile. Trump thought the president of Justice Roberts had in his pocket when it was allowed to be Cauht in a hot microphone when approved the president of the president of the Supreme Court on his way to deliver the discourse of the State of the Union 2025. His words for the Chamber, “thank you again. Thank you again. I will not forget it.” They intended to point to the world, Hey, owes me big, and I have it.
A common “Due process” These two current events (the death of the Pope and the illegal deportation of Kilmar Albego García) include another Judge of the Supreme Court: Antonio Scalia. Catholic and trained by Jesuits, shared a common lineage with Pope Francis, the first Jesuit to direct the Catholic Church. Other judges also share this Jesuit educational paternity, including Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch.
But Francis and Antonin have a second historical connection. Pope Francis, the day before the discourse of the State of the Union of 2025, labeled the immigration policies of the President and incoming vice president, “a misfortune.” More recently, the Vatican spoke in opposition to the prisons of El Salvador last week. Part of the critics tracked the lack of “Due process.”
Visiently obvious today, this was just an arm or an aggressive campaign of the 2025 project against the legal profession of the United States. At the end of March, multiple firms of DC -based lawyers promised loyalty to the Trump administration to avoid being forbidden to enter federal buildings to represent their customers. Some members of the target companies resisted. For example, Skadden’s associate, Rachel Cohen, resigned from her signature in protest, declaring, “Everything occurs, should this industry remain silent when the president operates outside the balance of the law, or not?”
Skadden’s former student spoke at Mass along with Rachel this week. Eighty more former associates of the firm signed a public protest letter that declared in part: “As Skadden students, we wrote to express our deep disappointment and deep outrage with respect to the recent Bulleto Witom, the Trump system.
It turns out that a current voice of Skadden Associate, 9 years ago, when he was still a Harvard Law student, has brought the legendary conservative justice, Antonin Scalia, to the mixture. At that time, Lucy Dicks-Mireaux described herself as “a liberal and minority woman” who believed that “many of Justice Scalia’s opinions returned equality several decades that her three decades on the court were”.
But he wrote in the May 4, 2016 edition of the “Harvard Civil Rights-Civilies Law Review,” which had a partial change of mind “when I read the dissent of Justice Scalia in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (and I found) that I agree.”
As Dicks-Mireaux explained at that time: “In HamdiThe American army arrested Hamdi, an American citizen, in the United States as an “enemy combatant” without trial. The army believed that Hamdi worked with the Taliban, but did not bring a criminal lawsuit against him. Hamdi’s father presented an order of habeas corpus, a petition asking Hamdi to be delivered to the court or released in the absence of a trial. The majority opinion reduced the right of due process of Hamdi by allowing him to be arrested with a lean that shows by the government of evidence that they had a reason to keep Hamdi. The court before which Hamdi would have the opportunity to refute these accusations would not be a court of justice, but a neutral decision maker. Evidence of rumors would be allowed. Hamdi would be presumed guilty until he demonstrates innocent. ”
In a prophetic comment that followed, we see how relevant is his analysis a decade ago to the current battle to return to Kilmar Albego García. She states: “I was very bothered by the extent to which the Court would reduce an essential constitutional law process, compared to the vague national security of the Conerns.”
To his surprise, so was Judge Scalia. As explained, “the voice of reason came from an unexpected source: Judge Scalia. Arguing that the government could not retain Citizens Unless the government processes them, Judge Scalia would have granted Habeas corpus (Fundamental protection against illegal detention). Judge Scalia would have required the government to present charges against Hamdi in a court of justice, or Congress has to suspend Habeas corpus. He could not believe that Judge Scalia was legislation for the child, but here he was, in black and white, writing that Hamdi deserved better than the Court had sacrificed. Hamdi deserved better because the law required it. ”
The lawyer Dicks-Mireaux joined Skadden after graduating from Harvard’s Law Faculty in 2018. He is associated in his department of litigation, and in 2023, he received “high honors” by the DC courts for his work “Pro Bono”. Will your skills for the use of Trump put in the future?
As many main lawyers in the United States, and religious leaders within the Catholic Church and beyond the well -understood, human rights are not only given by God, but also intend to be strongly defended under the “CLAUS OF DUE PROCESS” Or our constitution. If we fail in this regard, we can barely claim to be just citizens of these United States. As San Ignacio Loyola said, and his disciple, Pope Francis, embodied at the end, “if our church is not marked by caring for the poor, the chosen, the hungry, we are guilty of heresy.”
Mike Magee MD is a regular medical historian and collaborator from THCB. Hey is the author of Blue Code: Inside the Industrial Complex between the United States. (Grove/2020)