To Help Trump Defy the Constitution, a GOP Senator Proposes Ending Judicial Independence
When the Judge Serves the Ruler
What happens when the judge serves the ruler?
That question haunted the Founders. They had seen what power could do to justice—and what justice must do to constrain power. That’s why they built a system where the law stands above the leader, not beneath him.
Imagine if a president lost in court—not because of bias, but because the law and the facts weren’t on their side. A federal judge rules that the president’s actions are unconstitutional or unlawful. Checks and balances working exactly as designed.
The Proposal
On March 25, 2025, Ashley Moody, a Republican U.S. Senator from Florida, proposed exactly that.
Appearing on Fox News, she suggested that the federal government should create “specialty courts” to bypass federal judges who issue rulings unfavorable to President Donald Trump.
Some defenders argue this is a fix for judicial bias—a counter to so-called “liberal” courts.
But reform operates within the system. This proposal operates above it.
Reform seeks to uphold the rule of law. This replaces it.
And this comes as the administration Moody defends openly defies court orders, purges civil servants, and rewrites institutional norms in real time.
Moody, a former federal prosecutor and Attorney General of Florida, framed it as reform. But in truth, it was an attempt to sidestep judicial independence altogether.
Her proposal isn’t reform. It’s an attempt to selectively silence the courts—using tools that history, and the very Framers whom people like Moody claim to venerate, explicitly condemned.
It echoes the kind of system the Founders studied, feared, and rejected.
The Star Chamber
The Founders knew what happens when rulers shape courts to serve their will.
In pre-democratic England—before the 1689 Bill of Rights—prerogative courts operated under direct royal authority. Unlike common law courts, they had no juries, followed no standard legal procedures, and weren’t accountable to the public. They held secret hearings and punished dissent without due process. They didn’t exist to deliver justice—they existed to enforce the monarch’s will.
The most infamous of these was the Star Chamber. It answered directly to the crown. It bypassed juries, ignored legal protections, and became a tool for silencing opposition.
Its original mission was noble—punishing powerful nobles who intimidated the courts. But once the king controlled it, it became something darker: law in appearance, repression in practice.
Its abolition in 1641 wasn’t just legal housekeeping. It was a declaration: liberty cannot exist where power controls judgment.
The Founders’ Design
The American Founders studied what the Star Chamber became—and vowed never to repeat it. They pored over Blackstone’s Commentaries, Locke’s Treatises, and the debates that dismantled prerogative courts.
They weren’t just building a government.
They were building a firewall against the corrosion of justice.
Their break with Britain was more than rebellion. It was reinvention.
They had seen what happens when Parliament is sovereign—when rights can be granted or revoked at will. They rejected a system where liberty depended on the generosity of those in power.
Freedom, they believed, required more than elections. It required structure.
A written Constitution that bound all branches—not served them.
Judges who didn’t answer to presidents or parliaments.
Rights that were protected, not bestowed.
The British system was liberal for its time. It replaced kings with parliaments. But Parliament simply inherited the unchecked authority of the crown.
The Founders understood that concentrated power was dangerous—no matter who held it. So they divided it—into three co-equal branches.
They drew from Montesquieu’s theory of separation of powers, where ambition would check ambition.
And they reinforced it with Madison’s warning in Federalist No. 47:
“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands… may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
They didn’t aim for perfect leaders.
They built institutions to withstand imperfect ones.
Lessons from Fallen Republics
And they knew those institutions could erode faster than they were built.
They studied republics that promised liberty—but succumbed to those who weaponized it.
In Athens, demagogues like Cleon rose not through wisdom, but spectacle. He inflamed public passions, punished dissent, and made law a tool of vengeance. Athens gave voice to the people—but lacked structure to withstand manipulation.
In Rome, it was generals instead of orators. The Gracchi brothers bypassed norms in the name of reform. Marius fused military command with political ambition. Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon not to destroy the Senate—but to neuter it. He ruled in the name of the republic while dissolving its substance. And when he died, it wasn’t restoration. It was the beginning of empire.
Authoritarianism doesn’t always arrive with a crown.
Sometimes it arrives with applause.
Venice fell more quietly. Once a republic governed by merchant councils, it became rule by secrecy and silence. The Doge remained. The rituals endured. But real power vanished behind closed doors.
Where Rome fell in spectacle, Venice faded in silence.
The Pattern
But in every collapse, the pattern was the same:
Law bent to charisma.
Justice bowed to power.
Courts became instruments, not institutions.
The Founders feared not just monarchs—but men who acted like monarchs, unchecked by law and lifted by crowds.
They didn’t just separate power. They insulated it.
They built structural firewalls against personal ambition.
And in every fallen republic, the story ends the same way:
The rule of law becomes a rule of favor.
Courts no longer adjudicate—they affirm.
Justice no longer constrains power—it follows it.
The Real Threat
That’s what Ashley Moody’s proposal threatens—not just overreach, but the collapse of judicial independence.
When presidents can create courts that reflect their will, the system no longer belongs to the people.
It belongs to the ruler.
This is how republics die—not through force, but through redesign.
And this moment is the threshold.
What begins with a “specialty court” doesn’t end there.
First one court. Then an agency. Then a department.
Soon the executive isn’t merely enforcing the law.
He is installing the judges who interpret it.
The Constitution becomes optional.
Accountability becomes conditional.
Law becomes performance—choreographed to flatter, not to restrain.
And once that door opens, it rarely closes again.
Future presidents—of any party—will inherit the precedent.
They will not give it back.
Even those cheering today may regret it tomorrow.
Because no party rules forever—and no president, once handed a weapon, easily puts it down.
The Stakes
This isn’t theoretical. It’s already reshaping lives.
Ask the civil servant pressured to bend policy for loyalty.
Ask the whistleblower whose fate depends on impartial judges.
Ask the teacher, the journalist, the activist—what happens when their rights rest on courts shaped by political will.
Most Americans may never meet a federal judge.
But judicial independence protects their vote, their voice, and their freedom to dissent.
That’s the cost of forgetting.
When leaders propose “special courts” to bypass judges, they’re not fixing the system.
They’re unmaking it.
They’re not reforming justice—they’re rewriting its purpose.
They’re not restoring balance—they’re tipping it toward one man.
The Rubicon Moment
Dismantle the courts—and what follows won’t be governed by law.
It won’t be justice.
It will be domination.
This is the Rubicon moment—without the river.
And the only thing standing between democracy and decline is memory.
The Founders didn’t give us perfection.
They gave us a design—a system held together by restraint, structure, and civic courage.
That system is under siege.
And what happens next will define us.
Will we be a nation of laws—or a nation of men?
