When Gavin Newsom, the Governor of California, recently accused the Department of Justice of targeting his family, he tapped into a rich vein of political theatre. But the real drama here lies not in the histrionics of a flailing politician, but in what his accusations reveal about the decay of judicial independence in the American republic. The United Kingdom, by contrast, long ago settled the matter of executive overreach.
We had our own struggles, from the Star Chamber to the Glorious Revolution, but we emerged with the principle that the law must apply equally to all, even the Crown’s ministers. Newsom’s claim that the DOJ is engaging in a ‘politically motivated vendetta’ against his family smacks of the very corruption that the Founders sought to avoid. They feared that a powerful executive would use the legal system to crush opponents, much like the Stuart kings did.
Newsom, with his sanctimonious howling, is doing exactly that: framing a routine investigation as an assault on his dynasty. But this is not Rome, and he is not Caesar. The DOJ, for all its faults, is not a tool of tyranny.
It is a symptom of a system that has lost its way, where every legal action must be spun as a vendetta. The British model holds that the judiciary must be independent, not just of the executive but of the mob’s passions. Newsom’s outburst is a cry for the latter, a demand that the law bow to his political convenience.
California, the land of fruit and nuts, seems to have forgotten that in a functioning democracy, you do not accuse the law of persecution just because it dares to investigate. This is the kind of intellectual decadence that led to the fall of the Roman Republic, where Cicero’s lofty ideals gave way to the swords of the praetorian guard. The Governor’s words are a dagger aimed at the very heart of due process.
And yet, we in Britain must not be smug. Our own judges face pressures from the tabloids and the political class. But we have not yet reached the point where a governor can claim that a federal investigation is an assault on his bloodline.
That is the mark of a failed state, or at least a failing one. Let Newsom’s bluster remind us that judicial independence is a fragile flower, one that must be watered with humility and pruned of hubris. Otherwise, we will all end up like California: a beautiful garden that grows nothing but thorns.
