Constitutional Monarchy

[JudgeRightly]

I'm pretty sure if Clete and JR would agree to some sort of constitutional element which explains what constitutes voluntary abdication on the part of the monarch, that the apparent chasm between them would be bridged, and easily.

In Catholicism, for comparison, if a pope teaches manifest heresy, not under duress, then he is claiming he's not the pope anymore. He quit. So therefore he's not the pope, so therefore the seat is vacant, so therefore the succession process proceeds according to the constitution, and this man is expelled from the pope's quarters.

If something that was like, manifest heresy, except in the civil realm, then this could be included in Enyart's proposal. The upshot is that the monarch can either explicitly quit, retire, abdicate, vacate; or, he can also implicitly do it. The implication just has to be foolproof. Any idiot, not just a high ranking judge or lawyer or lawmaker, can make the evaluation, assessment, and call, in the ideal case. The ideal case might not exist. Again going back to the Catholicism comparison, what is "manifest heresy"? Is that something any idiot can identify? Unfortunately not. It does actually take an expert or a team or college of them, to reliably identify manifest heresy. So Catholicism isn't the ideal system, in the sense that, it takes more than an idiot to decide authoritatively that a monarch has implicitly quit.

Perhaps in the civil realm there's something that even an idiot could see, means the monarch has quit (by implication).

I understand the angle, but abdication is not really the point under dispute.

If the king voluntarily abdicates, explicitly or by some unmistakable public act, then the throne is vacant and the succession process begins. That is not especially controversial.

But Clete’s proposal, as I understand it, is not merely about recognizing a vacancy. It is about creating a domestic legal mechanism by which a sitting king can be judged and removed.

Those are different categories.

Abdication means the king has vacated the office.

Removal means someone else has authority to declare that he may no longer occupy it.

So defining abdication may be useful, but it does not bridge the actual gap unless the alleged “implicit abdication” is truly unmistakable and not just judicial removal under another name.

If the king says, “I abdicate,” fine.

If the king publicly renounces the Constitution and says he no longer rules under it, fine, maybe that can be treated as vacancy by his own act.

But if judges, lawyers, experts, or a council must decide against the king’s denial that he has “implicitly abdicated,” then we are right back to the same jurisdiction problem:

Who has final earthly authority to make that determination?

If the answer is some court or process beneath the king, then that court or process is above him at the decisive point.

 

[Clete]

@JudgeRightly,

Yet another new direction from which to make the same essential point....



Civil disobedience is explicitly sanctioned by the proposed constitution...

"Any amendment or command issued by the King in defiance of this Constitution including one that increases taxes, gives all subjects the responsibility to engage in non-violent civil disobedience, including by withholding taxes, against such offense..."​

​

To use your logic...

Who determines that the king has violated the Constitution? (rhetorical question)



The Constitution already permits ordinary citizens to decide that a king's command is unconstitutional and to withhold obedience from him. Therefore, the Constitution already recognizes that the king's judgment is not the final earthly judgment in every matter. The people themselves are expected to evaluate his actions against the Constitution.

If citizens may determine that the king has violated the Constitution and may lawfully resist him through civil disobedience, why is it inconceivable that some constitutional process could determine the same thing and impose a constitutional consequence?


Also, have you ever thought through what such "non-violent civil disobedience" would actually look like and how it would be carried out? How far is this civil disobedience permitted to go?

What happens when the king orders the military to collect it anyway?
What happens when he arrests those who are withholding taxes?
What happens when he appoints judges who support him?

The Constitution appears to assume that widespread civil disobedience will either

• Convince the king to back down,
• Convince subordinate officials not to cooperate,
• Convince the military/police not to enforce the order,
• Create sufficient social pressure to stop the violation.

In other words, the remedy is largely political and moral rather than judicial.
But, if the Constitution already contemplates a situation where...

• citizens judge the king's actions unconstitutional,
• citizens refuse obedience,
• citizens refuse taxes,
• officials may refuse cooperation,

...then the Constitution is already relying on human beings to make constitutional judgments against the king.

The real difference between Bob's approach and mine isn't whether men may oppose an unlawful king. Indeed, Bob explicitly says they may. The difference is that Bob stops at civil disobedience, while I am arguing that there should also be a lawful mechanism to deal with a king who persists in violating the Constitution. In short a more orderly and official form of civil disobedience. Let the people resist, but give them a constitutional mechanism that has some realistic chance of prevailing against a king who no longer cares what the Constitution says.