The Emperor Isn’t Naked. We Are.

In a recent New York Times opinion, Professors Barry Friedman and Stephen Vladeck argue that, despite deeply troubling actions by the federal government at home and abroad, the United States remains “a nation of laws.” It’s a comforting claim — and for much of our history, it’s been true.

But it’s no longer clear that the legal framework the United States has relied on since 1776 is capable of restraining the kind of federal power now being exercised.

This isn’t about any single invasion, naval encounter, killing in the street, policy dispute, enforcement action, or constitutional controversy. It’s about the assumptions our legal system was built on — and what happens when those assumptions no longer hold.

American Law Assumed Most of Us Were All In

At its core, American law rests on an agreement we rarely name: that most people in power, most of the time, accept the system itself as binding.

The Constitution anticipates bad actors. It provides courts, elections, oversight, and remedies. But it does not seriously account for a federal executive willing to operate openly and repeatedly outside legal limits, while treating the law as something to be worked around rather than obeyed.

Our system assumes good faith not in isolated cases, but across institutions and over time. When that assumption collapses, the law does not suddenly rise to the occasion. It recedes into irrelevance.

Legal Process Isn’t Enough Anymore

The tools lawyers instinctively reach for — lawsuits, injunctions, hearings, investigations — are slow and incremental by design. They were meant to correct violations, not to stop a sustained campaign of defiance. They work when court orders are respected; when agencies adjust their behavior accordingly; when Congress acts as a real counterweight; and when political consequences follow legal overreach.

But when those conditions disappear, the law starts to function less as a restraint and more as a running commentary on power already exercised — in other words, a literal moot court.

That is not a value judgment. It is a practical one.

The Norms That Used to Be Enough

Much of what has limited federal power in the past was never written into statute or doctrine. It lived instead in shared expectations: that adverse court rulings would be respected; that emergency authorities would be used sparingly; that federalism imposed real limits; and that legality meant more than assembling a post hoc defense.

Those norms turned out to be load-bearing — without them, the system does not merely strain; it begins to fail.

The Danger of Pretending We’ll Be Just Fine

For lawyers and institutionalists, the instinct is to reassure: the courts will intervene, elections will correct course, the system has survived worse.

That reassurance is understandable — and increasingly dangerous.

If the legal system is not equipped to stop what it was never designed to confront, insisting otherwise does not protect its legitimacy. It undermines it. It teaches people that the law promises safeguards it cannot deliver.

More troubling still, escalating conflict may not be an accident. It may be the point — provoking resistance, polarizing opposition, and laying the groundwork for even more extreme assertions of power.

I am not prepared to offer solutions. I am not even prepared to say publicly what some solutions might require. But I am prepared to say this:

We can no longer pretend that the American legal system, by itself, is sufficient to restrain a federal

government that no longer accepts its basic premises.

Acknowledging that reality isn’t radical. Refusing to acknowledge it is.