How Democracy Works

I hold both British and Canadian citizenship. By one reading, American constitutional law is none of my business. But the United States placed itself at the centre of the post-war international order — its institutions, its alliances, its currency, its military reach. That was not imposed on the world; it was largely welcomed, or at least accepted. The consequence is that when American democracy functions badly, the effects are not contained within American borders. Economic disruption, foreign policy instability, the erosion of the norms that underpin international institutions — these travel. Canadians and Europeans and the rest of the world do not get a vote in American elections, but they bear a significant share of the consequences of their outcomes. That is why I'm writing this. Not to lecture. Because it matters here too. Since inauguration the sovereignty of my adopted home, Canada, has been repeatedly threatened. There is history there, Canada was attacked by the US in 1812 in a war that lasted about 2 years and 8 months and resulted in the Whitehouse being burned and the President leaving Washington DC. For most of the two centuries since then a repeat has been almost unthinkable until last year. No Canadians are boycotting travel to the US, buying American produce and finding new alliances to replace the one with the US. For some this will last until the US removes it current regime with its expansionist agenda for many this is a done deal and there will be no going back. Relationships that end with one partner betraying the other cannot be resumed they must be rebuilt and that is a generational project. But why are we here? The American constitutional system was not designed for bad faith. The founders built a system of separated powers — executive, legislative, judicial — on the assumption that the people occupying those roles would broadly honour the norms, written and unwritten, that gave the system legitimacy. They created checks and balances. What they could not create was the will to use them. The erosion has been gradual and bipartisan, but it has accelerated. Since the George W. Bush administration, executive overreach has become the default mode of American governance. Wars prosecuted without meaningful congressional authorisation. Policy driven by executive order rather than legislation — not because legislation was impossible, but because legislation requires compromise and accountability, and executive orders do not. Congress has increasingly found it politically convenient to avoid difficult votes, leaving contentious issues unresolved and using them instead as perpetual electoral ammunition. The consequence is instability. Executive orders can be reversed the moment a new administration takes office. Policy that should be durable — because it was debated, contested, and passed — instead lurches between administrations, creating uncertainty for businesses, institutions, and individuals who cannot plan around a system that changes with the weather. Into this vacuum, the courts have stepped. More and more, the judiciary has become a shadow legislature — deciding through litigation what Congress will not decide through deliberation. This was already problematic. It has become acute. The Supreme Court's shadow docket — emergency orders issued without full briefing, oral argument, or written explanation — has become a primary instrument of executive policy. The second Trump administration filed more emergency applications in its first year than the Biden administration filed in four years. The Court ruled in the administration's favour approximately 80 percent of the time, often in unsigned orders of a few sentences. Justice Kagan noted in dissent that the emergency docket "should not be used to transfer government authority from Congress to the President, and thus to reshape the Nation's separation of powers." That is precisely what it is being used for. A court that issues consequential rulings without explanation cannot be held accountable for its reasoning. A court that rules overwhelmingly in favour of one administration, on a docket shaped by that administration's choices about which cases to bring, cannot easily be distinguished from a court that has been captured. Whether or not that is what has happened, the appearance is now sufficient to do serious damage. Trust in institutions depends not only on what they do but on whether the public can see how and why they do it. The founders expected ambition to counteract ambition. They did not anticipate that ambition on one side would be met with abdication on the other — that Congress would choose electoral convenience over constitutional responsibility, leaving the executive and judiciary to fill the space. The question this space is here to deliberate is not whether American democracy is in trouble. It visibly is. The question is whether the constitutional design can correct itself from within, or whether external pressure — from voters, from states, from international scrutiny — is now the only realistic check on executive power. What do you think? And what, if anything, should functioning democracies elsewhere be doing about it? Sources: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/supreme-court-abuse-shadow-docket-under-trump
 https://law.stanford.edu/2026/01/22/the-supreme-courts-shadow-docket-signaling-and-the-racial-politics-of-immigration-enforcement/