The USA Crisis of Law and Human Dignity: Philosophers of Law Reveal the Deeper Issue

TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 12 May 2025

Glen T. Martin, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service

4  May 2025 – Philosophers of Law have been active in North America and Europe for the past century. They have articulated in surprising ways the deeper meanings of government and law. In the light of the Donald Trump administration’s disregard of the rule of law, of due-process, of the rights and dignity of citizens that the law is meant to protect, and of the US Constitution that he has sworn to uphold, it is well worth our effort to reflect on what they have to say.

Donald Trump and his henchmen have been attempting to turn the US government into a weapon in the service of their incoherent and bizarre ideology. Rather than any attempt to comprehend the fundamental purposes of government and law, they hold the dogma that “big government is bad.” Rather than reflect on the concept of “due-process of law” and its significance for human beings and their intrinsic dignity, they hold the dogma that authoritarian use of governmental power is justified in order to “get rid” of the things they do not like: immigrants, a fantasized criminal element, people who have protested against the US supported genocide in Gaza, and people who resist their colonization of the educational system to propagandize for white supremacy, patriarchy, extreme nationalism, domination by the ultra-wealthy; they promote the freedom of big business to operate without governmental regulation, and complete destruction of ideas like “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

The key to getting rid of these fanaticized “evils” in society involves the arbitrary use of governmental power, that is tyrannical power—you simply “disappear” the immigrants, you threaten the educational institutions with loss of funding if they do not conform to your ideology, you use arbitrary laws directed by your own egoism to attack or go after those who resist, whether they be judges, lawyers who try to resist by enforcing existing laws, or political opponents. The Trump-fascists intuitively recognize that “due-process of law” would hinder their accomplishment of these goals. Hence, they use “executive orders”—arbitrary directives that eliminate legal restraints on using governmental authority to achieve their ideological goals. They have zero insight into human dignity. They are hell-bent on creating an ideologically grounded tyranny.

Government is about human beings. Who are we, and the question of how we govern ourselves in complex societies? It involves the need for some authoritative set of rules required for life in such societies. Philosopher of Law H.L.A. Hart (mid-20^th century Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford University) in his book The Concept of Law (1961) describes the various kinds of rules needed. These include both “primary rules” (the rules against theft, violence, etc. that most people think of as law) and “secondary rules.” The secondary rules give us the rules of “change, adjudication, and recognition” by which a society organizes the transfer of power and authority, by which judges make their decisions, etc. Hart’s thought was a tremendous step forward in that it revealed that law is a multidimensional reality much more complex and sophisticated than earlier theories of law had imagined. It is not simply a matter of a ruler or ruling class exerting “power over” the majority in some society, a position that naïve “positivism” continues to hold despite these advancements.

Nevertheless, this “who we are” that government is about has hidden depths and dimensions that take us far beyond anything that is imagined as an alternative to MAGA by the Democratic Party. This is expressed in Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence in a way that appears quaint and unbelievable today to both parties. “All men are born equal, and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.” For Jefferson, there is something deep and transformative expressed in every human being, something linked with the very foundations of the universe. Hart articulates beautifully the complex set of rules required in modern societies but fails to capture the “cosmic” dimension to which Jefferson points us.

Yale University political historian Timothy Synder captures something of this cosmic dimension in his recent book On Freedom (2024) in which he calls freedom “the fifth dimension,” another dimension of the universe in addition to the three dimensions of space and the fourth of time. The cosmos, through human temporality has produced a fifth dimension—freedom. There is something cosmically new and special in human beings that is lost to both Republicans and main stream Democrats. In my recent book Human Dignity and World Order (2024), I investigated this emergent dimension known as “human dignity.” The universe has produced in us what can be termed “metaphysical freedom,” our most fundamental human quality that is also directly linked to political freedom.

Jefferson pointed to this; Abraham Lincoln and some other great US leaders may have intuited this dimension; Franklin D. Roosevelt may have encompassed some of this insight in his vision of a “New Deal,” but there is little that is deep, cosmic, or profound in most of what Republicans or Democrats have produced for decades. Political philosopher Herbert Marcuse famously captured some of this spiritual emptiness in his book One Dimensional Man (1964). If human beings have freedom, if we have “inalienable rights,” if we possess inherent dignity, this is neither captured in the stupidity of the MAGA vision nor in the insipid Democratic alternative. Both are “one dimensional,” missing the real significance of freedom and dignity.

Perhaps Bernie Sanders intuits something of this significance. Perhaps the discontent of the so-called “Christian Right” that has embraced MAGA has insight into this dimension that is missing (as mistaken as they may be about the MAGA alternative). Government, whatever else it may be, must be designed to enhance and empower the cosmic dimension of freedom and human dignity. The ultimate principle behind the Cosmos that many people name “God” has brought freedom out of the cosmic process and has placed responsibility for this squarely on the shoulders of the human project. Philosopher Hans Jonas in the Imperative of Responsibility (1984) is very good on developing this insight. Freedom and dignity are the core responsibility of government, which has nothing at all to do with the so-called “free market” of the oligarchs.

As philosopher William Barrett (1979) expresses this: “A regime that would strive to extinguish political freedom completely is compelled to remove any vestige of the idea of metaphysical freedom” (360). Hence, the Trump regime’s attack on the educational system and the universities, on public radio and the free press. The very idea of each person embodying cosmic (divinely grounded) freedom and dignity must be expunged from our thought. Their goons in the FBI and ICE break down people’s doors wearing masks, refusing to identify themselves, and kidnap whom they please in unmarked vehicles. Such violence and brutality indicate more than willful lawlessness. They are meant to crush any sense we might have of our own personal freedom and dignity.

H.L.A. Hart’s successor in the Chair of Jurisprudence at Oxford University was Ronald Dworkin. In such books as Law’s Empire (1986), Dworkin revealed that behind the legal rules pervading complex societies there lies a dimension of moral evaluations. Judges do not simply decide cases on the basis of precedent (past cases), there is always a factor of evaluation, a moral framework, an implicit “ideal” is at work. The essential framework that serves as a pervasive ideal in any complex society he calls “law as integrity:” “Law as integrity asks judges to assume, as far as this is possible, that law is structured by a coherent set of principles about justice and fairness of procedural due-process” (p. 243).

This is where it becomes clear that the Trump Administration is illegitimate, even if duly elected by a confused electorate. Trump and his henchmen (that he has put in place in his Cabinet and placed in charge of the Justice Department and other key agencies) are functionally a criminal enterprise that has taken over the US government. They have zero comprehension of the “law as integrity” aspect of the US government. (Whatever its many flaws may have been, this element was already there and was in need of enhancement rather than destruction). To convert governmental authority to a “power over” modus operandi that abjures the due-process of law is to destroy the very essence of the legitimate and necessary law that is the essence of human life in complex societies. Elections alone are insufficient to confer legitimacy, and that is why we have an impeachment process.

Carl Schmitt was the primary Nazi philosopher of law. During the Weimar democracy (before Hitler’s rise to power) he had been a professor at the University of Bonn. Hitler appointed him as a chief legal advisor for the Nazis. Schmitt argued that liberal democracy was inherently unstable and needed to be replaced by the dictatorship of a “sovereign will” (in this case Hitler). A law is necessarily general, he observed. It cannot cover all the particular cases that might fall under it. The judiciary is supposed to apply these general laws to particular cases. However, because law is inherently general, judicial decisions are always subjective and discretionary. Hence, liberal democracy will always be paralyzed without the ability to take necessary actions. The sovereign will of the dictator breaks this impasse and accomplishes what is necessary. Hence, dictatorship must replace liberal democracy.

This spurious argument should ring a bell in terms of the program called “Project 2025” that the Trump Administration is implementing. The forms of debate, decision-making, self-reviewal, quality control, and due process that formerly operated within nearly all US agencies and departments (that MAGA doctrine calls “bureaucratic immobility and inaction”) included (at least to some extent) the ideals of respect for persons, distributive justice, and “law as integrity.” Carl Schmitt calls this system of debate and due-process “paralysis.” Only a dictatorial will, the Nazis claimed, can break through democratic bureaucracies for effective social action.

American political philosopher Alan Gewirth argues that all legitimate law is connected, at the most fundamental level, with the structure of a human being as a self-determining agent. That is, each normal person is a free agent capable of making decisions about his or her life. Simply because a person is a purposive agent it follows that “All purposive agents have rights to freedom and well-being.” This is what it means to have equal dignity. Nature (the cosmos) has gifted and defined each person as just this freedom and dignity. The sole function of government, he argues, is to protect the freedom, and ensure the well-being of, all its citizens.

For Gewirth, the basic dogma of the Trump Administration is the exact opposite of the intrinsic function of government. The purpose of the law is to enhance and protect the equal freedom of all citizens (as purposive agents with inherent dignity) and to ensure their well-being through providing education, health-care, a safe environment, housing if necessary, etc. The dogmatic doctrine of the Trump administration declares that all “well-being” arrangements must be provided by private, profit-making corporations and that today’s governmental functions like social security, the post-office, Medicaid, or aid to poor mothers and children constitute an ideologically prohibited “socialism.” For them, “freedom,” does not mean equal freedom for everyone but only freedom for big capital to accumulate profits in an imaginary “free market.” This may be the ultimate perversion of our cosmic gift of freedom.

The idea of a duty toward the generic protection of freedom, equal for all (simply because all normal persons are purposive agents with dignity) is entirely foreign to MAGA thinking. When fascist fantasies replace the commonsense notions that government and law are established to protect human freedom and well-being, then the only alternative is to use power arbitrarily to promote one’s dogmatism. Executive orders replace rational discourse, fake “facts” are used to justify self-serving edicts. Once what Gewirth calls the “generic notions of equality and dignity” have been abandoned, government becomes simply illegitimate power-over, that is tyranny, dictatorship, brutality, and violence.

In The Community of Rights (1996), Gewirth argues government, insofar as it fulfills its central purpose of providing freedom and well-being, can be called “an institutionalization of love….in a system of policies motivated by a concern for the fulfillment of all persons’ needs for dignity, self-respect, and more generally for the necessary conditions of action….a life of flourishing, autonomy, and fruitful association with others” (p. xv). By contrast, the Trump Administration can be called “an institutionalization of hate and fear.” There is zero love in Trump, and nothing but viciousness and cruelty in those he has assembled as his top lieutenants in his assault on the American dream.

For John Finnis, Professor of Law and Legal Philosophy at Oxford University, in his book Natural Law and Natural Rights (1980), the basic requirements of morality or “practical reason,” when applied to society in the form of law, are what “justify the exercise of authority in community.” This is the very meaning of the: “Rule of Law…due respect for human rights which embody the requirements of justice, and for the purpose of promoting a common good in which such respect for human rights is a component” (p. 23). Authority that is not primarily oriented toward the goal of equal justice for all within a common good that includes equal respect for human rights, is simply illegitimate: morally speaking not real law—simply tyranny or dictatorship.

This is the basic reason why Trump needs to be impeached and removed from office. The list of his specific crimes would make such a procedure easy enough to accomplish. These crimes most fundamentally reveal that Trump violates the very purpose of law and government, which is to foster equal human rights for all within the context of the common good. Under Trump, legitimate law as the quest for integrity (Dworkin) is violated. The protection of human dignity through fostering human freedom and well-being (Gewirth) is abandoned. The pursuit of the common good of all within the context of human rights (Finnis) is scorned. The Trump regime is an illegitimate, rogue regime. It must be stopped.

David Luban, University Professor in Law and Philosophy at Georgetown University Law Center, has written extensively on the link between the rule of law and human dignity. In his book Legal Ethics and Human Dignity (2007), he observes that due process of law, and the right of every accused person to defend him or herself when confronted by governmental authority, is simply the recognition of our common human dignity. Every person has a story to tell, Luban affirms. Every person is a “subjectivity” with a life story. The role of lawyers is to help make this telling of a story possible, and the denial of due-process constitutes a form of “humiliation” precisely because it treats the accused as a “thing,” denying their subjectivity and their life story. This is why people must be considered “innocent” until proven guilty.

Again, we see here an understanding of the meaning of law and democracy that is entirely missing from MAGA ideology and the Trump Administration. The lawyers working for the Trump administration (as several judges have recently pointed out) are risking disbarment and contempt of court sanctions because they are using the law and courts for illicit and corrupt purposes, violating the integrity and honesty to which one must take an oath in any court of law. Immigrants, whether illegal or legal, have a story to tell, for they are human beings with inherent dignity. They are thereby entitled to be respected as human beings and to not be subject to the humiliation and dehumanization that we have seen publicly demonstrated by the FBI and ICE authorities at the direction of the Trump Administration.

All of the above thinkers cite the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 (that US First Lady Elenor Roosevelt helped bring into existence) as providing a correct assessment of human beings: “Recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” Human rights (as Gewirth and the other philosophers of law referenced here make very clear) derive simply and directly from the fact that we are purposive beings who can responsibly make decisions about our lives, goals, hopes, and dreams. The function of the law is to respect human rights, as Finnis emphasizes, within the framework of the equal common good of all.

These principles not only condemn the illegitimate Trump regime, but all dictatorships everywhere, for they are principles of our common humanity—simply what we are as human beings. Respect for human rights and dignity is indeed the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world. The Cosmos has gifted us with the burden and responsibility of freedom. What we do with this freedom is the great question of our planetary human project. Thus far we have squandered it in endless wars, by developing weapons of mass destruction, and by pursuing a nationalistic internecine madness. It will take massive civil disobedience and non-cooperation to stop Trump. It will also require an awakening of the Democratic Party to the true function of government and a transformed vision for the future.

That is why we need to be studying the Constitution for the Federation of Earth. That is why the 16^th session of the Provisional World Parliament is coming up in December 2025. We are one human family (as the sacred texts of India declare). We must begin thinking and acting on this fact and embracing the deep planetary responsibility bequeathed to us by our freedom and dignity. The first step, demanded immediately, is to impeach Trump. The second step with respect to human dignity is to begin to “mean all when we say ‘all’”. The third step is to establish a planetary civilization founded on freedom and dignity.

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Dr. Glen T. Martin:
– Member, TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment
– Professor of Philosophy Emeritus
– Founder/Chairperson Emeritus, Program in Peace Studies, Radford University
– President, World Constitution and Parliament Association (WCPA);
– President, Earth Constitution Institute (ECI)
– Author of twelve books and hundreds of articles concerning global issues, human spirituality, and democratic world government; a recipient of many peace awards.
www.earthconstitution.world – Email: gmartin@radford.edu

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 12 May 2025.

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