I do not recall any single statement amusing me so hard for so long as the following one that I read in the news recently: "It is not in the power of this Court to violate the Constitution."
Like many principled idealists, sharp ideas hit me hard. I really can't tell if this sharp statement by Judge Matthew Brann in Pennsylvania emanates from a legal reluctance or legal pounding. I can only say that it hit me very hard as civilization roaring out of Pennsylvania.
If we are to measure it by the number of voters, perhaps, we can say that the quest for democracy has become the talk in town in the U.S. now more than ever before.
If I am not mistaken, many have argued that the U.S. is the first country to form a society of a written constitution. Granted that I am not mistaken about this argument, imagine if constitutional societies flourish around the world, and imagine if learned judges can so clearly state that it is not in the power of their courts to violate the respective society's constitution. I imagine that these seemingly simple but profoundly noble acts by judges would make humanity's long quest and struggles for democracy history and our planet its shining home in the cosmos.
When it comes to our own Ethiopia, I still remember how I came to read about Judge Birtukan Mideksa when she made the decision to uphold the country's constitutional provision of the time. If my reading serves me right, that decision may have led her to a subsequent struggle for democracy as a political activist in the lead up to the 2005 elections in Ethiopia.
I haven't had an opportunity to read her decision statement. So, I can't tell what glaring ideas may be in it like the one I quoted above, which may be well placed to be etched into humanity's consciousness into eternity.
We may have yet to fully understand the genesis of humanity's reckoning with putting law above itself and live by it in peace. Based on my very limited reading, the struggles for it are in abundance, starting from the time of Socrates to the latest Presidential election of the U.S. in 2020 and the debate in its aftermath.
Pennsylvania may not have created the seed of democracy. However, it has unequivocally provided the ground for planting the seed of democracy, however imperfectly the attempt to plant it was made from the outset, for a reason. That reason may well be the lack or absence of knowledge at the time about the origin of the seed.
However imperfectly it has been handled by its caretakers, the ancient seed in a new land and environment has evidently thrived, rightly so, behaving in ways its genesis brought it to reality. That realization led to defining what it means to be human, at least according to research into ancient Greece through funding by the National Science Foundation of the U.S.
By the standard of that reckoning, today's richest person in the world, Jeff Bezos, should not feel entitled to be living on this planet any more than the poorest person on this planet, who may well be a homeless person in Los Angeles, CA. Mind you, I am not discussing material wealth here wherever it is earned instead of stolen. I am discussing the sense of entitlement by anyone to live on this planet more than anybody else. It is likely that the Taliban who shot at Malala for going to school and the western Talibans that feel the wild west might be above the constitution have thought otherwise.
I came across the sharp statement by Judge Brann in the time I have been thinking that democracy is irreversible. Once more, it may well be humanity's gravity that gave birth to the brainchild that discovered natural gravity.
One could argue that it may well be this humanity's gravity that the late U.S. President Ronald Reagan described as a shining city on a hill. What else could it be? If it can't be anything else, what could be in the way of constitutional societies flourishing all around the world and the planet, instead of just the U.S., becoming humanity's shining home in the cosmos.
When the wild west reckons with bowing to the supremacy of law and all judges of constitutional socities reckon so clearly with the absence of power in their courts to violate their respective society's constitutions, however long it takes, that shining home in the cosmos may well become a reality into eternity.
Without having any expertise to lecture anyone about democracy, I can't help sharing about every self-respecting person's yearning for it. That statement came across as a profound expression of that shared yearning about the very idea of civility and civilization that I have been scribbling about here and there.