The Empire Has No Clothes

Once mythologised as the great experiment of modern democracy, the United States is now offering the world a tragic spectacle, not of external collapse, but of internal decay. The checks no longer check, the balances no longer balance, and the Supreme Court, once the supposed guardian of justice, has become a partisan actor in its own power play.

Veteran Australian journalist Jack Waterford’s recent article¹ doesn’t merely critique this reality, it lays it bare, with all the weary disbelief of someone watching a slow-motion implosion from the other side of the Pacific.

When the Judges Are the Problem

Chief Justice John Roberts recently expressed concern that attacks on the judiciary were endangering the rule of law². But the irony is suffocating: it is his own court that has been instrumental in eroding that rule.

From rulings that defy precedent to ethics scandals ignored by the bench itself³, the Supreme Court has repeatedly shown itself unwilling to hold even the appearance of impartiality. Justice Clarence Thomas accepted lavish undisclosed gifts from billionaire donors⁴; Justice Samuel Alito took luxury trips funded by parties with interests before the court⁵. And still, there has been no internal reckoning.

The court has become a rubber stamp not just for Trump-era policies, but for a broader ideology of deregulation, plutocracy, and political retribution.

The Constitutional Mirage

The U.S. Constitution is often invoked as sacred scripture, but Waterford reminds us: it's being used as a fig leaf for corruption. The so-called “originalists” on the Court invoke the intentions of 18th-century slaveholders to justify 21st-century rollbacks of rights and freedoms.

While judicial activism in Australia and other Westminster systems tends to be cautious and incremental, the American court’s recent decisions – from overturning Roe v. Wade⁶ to blocking gun control legislation despite mass shootings⁷ – reveal a judicial body untethered from public interest or historical continuity.

Trump’s Gift Economy – and the Price of Silence

The allegations – and celebrations – of a $600 million jet gifted to Donald Trump by the Qatari royal family⁸ read like satire. But in today's America, it barely makes a ripple. That such an emolument violates the Constitution⁹ is seemingly of no consequence – not to Trump, not to his enablers in Congress, and certainly not to the justices who continue to protect him through strategic inaction.

This is not about decorum. It’s about systemic corruption – and the absence of institutional will to confront it.

First Peoples, First Betrayed

Let's not forget, however, that the U.S. system’s rot is not new. The First Peoples of America, whose land was stolen, and whose treaties were broken, whose communities continue to be disenfranchised, have long lived under a different reality than the myth of American justice.

We mourn not only what’s been lost, but what was never truly given.

Time to Turn Away?

As Australians, perhaps it is time we stop clinging to the illusion of shared values with the U.S. The ANZUS alliance may have strategic merit, but moral kinship? That illusion is fading.

Australia must look to our own backyard; to Asia, to the Pacific, to our own First Nations, for partnerships built not on empire, but on respect.

Liberty may be lost in America. Whether it can be regained is for Americans to decide. But we can, and must, choose where we stand.

The Court That Chose Power Over Principle

What we’re witnessing is not simply a failure of one president, or one political party. It is the deliberate corrosion of a judicial institution that was meant to uphold the highest ideals of democracy, not to legalise their erosion.

The U.S. Supreme Court has become an instrument of power, not its constraint. Its justices, entrusted to interpret law with impartiality and integrity, have instead taken up partisan arms. They have enabled the rewriting of constitutional meaning to serve ideology. They have blessed corruption by omission. And they have cloaked political expedience in the robes of judicial authority.

For those of us in Australia, Canada, the UK, and New Zealand, this is not a distant drama. The United States is still, on paper, our strategic partner, our cultural mirror, our democratic example. But how much longer can we pretend that we share common values when the cornerstone of their democracy has willingly joined the wrecking crew?

We must confront the possibility that America, as we once imagined it, is gone. Not destroyed from without, but hollowed from within. Its institutions are now so captured and compromised that reform may no longer be possible without rupture.

The founding fathers, for all their sins, at least spoke the language of principle. Today’s court speaks in riddles of power, grievance, and payback.

And so the question remains: If liberty has been lost by judicial betrayal and not revolution as one would expect, can it ever be truly regained?

References

1. The US Supremes, not its critics, are trashing the rule of law – Jack Waterford, May 20, 2025 (Canberra Times) ↩
2. Chief Justice Roberts decries attacks on judiciary (Reuters) ↩
3. How the Supreme Court is undermining its own legitimacy – Brookings ↩
4. Clarence Thomas Secretly Accepted Luxury Trips from GOP Donor – ProPublica ↩
5. Justice Alito Took Luxury Fishing Trip With GOP Donor – ProPublica ↩
6. Supreme Court Overturns Roe v. Wade – NPR ↩
7. Supreme Court expands gun rights, striking down New York law – NBC ↩
8. USA Today: Trump’s $400M Jet Gift from Qatar
9. U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 – Emoluments Clause ↩