What Happens After the Courts Fall?
The law as we knew it is ending. A higher law must rise in its place.
We’re watching something surreal play out in real time: a Supreme Court that seems paralyzed by the weight of the current political moment: caught between upholding the law and protecting its own relevance.
In recent rulings, the Court has at times sided with Donald Trump, and at other times ruled against him, but in every case, it has tiptoed. When it handed Trump a major win by recognizing broad presidential immunity, conservative justices emphasized that the ruling was “for the ages,” as if to reassure themselves that it wasn’t really about Trump at all. When the Court unanimously ruled against his administration in the Abrego Garcia deportation case, it still let key deadlines lapse and warned against “unconstitutional impositions” on presidential power, effectively softening the blow. And even when lower court judges have accused Trump’s administration of defying orders and threatening the rule of law, the justices have remained cautious, careful not to provoke.
That caution reveals the deeper crisis. The Court is no longer behaving like an independent branch of government, but like a cornered institution: calculating when, how, and to what extent it dares to oppose Trump, lest he turn the full weight of Congress and the executive against it. What the justices haven’t yet realized is that once you start thinking that way, you’ve already lost. If the rule of law survives only at the pleasure of a president, then the rule of law is already gone.
Donald Trump doesn’t need to ignore the courts to destroy them. He can do it legally. And this time, there may be no one left to stop him.
For years, many of us held on to a fragile hope: that no matter how dysfunctional our politics became, the courts would step in when it mattered most. Not because they had always protected our rights — they hadn’t. From Dred Scott to Plessy, from Korematsu to Shelby County, the Supreme Court has a long and painful history of enabling oppression, shielding power, and abandoning principle. Even in recent years, it has gutted voting rights, ended affirmative action, and insulated presidents from accountability. But despite all that, there was still a belief — or maybe a desperation — that when the moment of crisis came, when democracy itself was on the line, the justices would rise above ideology, politics, and fear to defend the rule of law.
That belief is crumbling because the rule of law has already collapsed.
“The question now isn’t how Trump might seize control of the judiciary.
It’s what happens once he does.”
What we’re witnessing isn’t a warning. It’s a preview. We have a sitting president who has made his contempt for the Constitution explicit. He talks openly about ending birthright citizenship, running for a third term, and using state power to punish his enemies. He’s surrounded by enablers who treat his delusions as doctrine and backed by a political base that has shown, over nearly a decade, there is no line they won’t cross for him. And while his power grows, the institutions we once counted on to resist him are caving one by one.
There is no center of resistance. The Democratic Party is fractured and reactive. The legal profession is hedging and retreating. Universities, media outlets, and civil society groups that once claimed to be bulwarks against authoritarianism are increasingly silent — or worse, accommodating. No one wants to be the next target, and so everyone waits for someone else to take the risk.
And in that vacuum, Trump expands. He consolidates. He tests the system and learns that each time he pushes, nothing pushes back.
This is the world we live in now. The guardrails are gone. The brakes are off. And if we keep pretending that the courts — or the Constitution, or the vague memory of “norms” — will somehow restrain him when it really counts, we’ll miss the truth staring us in the face.
Trump doesn’t need to dismantle the courts tomorrow. They’re already shrinking in his shadow today.
The question now isn’t how Trump might seize control of the judiciary.
It’s what happens once he does.
Because the most important question we face is no longer if the courts fall.
It’s what comes after.
The Law Will Still Exist — But It Will Belong to Trump
Americans think of tyranny as lawless: the strongman who breaks rules and defies the Constitution. But modern authoritarianism doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t destroy law. It inflitrates it. Colonizes it. It bends statutes, procedures, and institutions until they no longer serve the people but the regime.
That’s what comes after the courts fall. Not chaos. Not martial law. But something colder, more insidious: the illusion of order. The machinery of justice will still turn, but its purpose will be inverted. The law will no longer constrain power. It will serve it.
There Will Be No Neutral Forum
Imagine a world where every lawsuit challenging Trump’s abuses is dismissed before it’s even heard. Where voting rights cases, challenges to executive overreach, and constitutional claims about free speech, due process, or equal protection are declared “non-justiciable” by statute — barred from even reaching a courtroom. Where federal judges are no longer selected for independence or experience, but for personal loyalty to the president, ideological purity, and a willingness to bend the law to serve power.
In this world, the courtroom still exists. The robes are still worn. The gavels still fall. But the theater of justice has replaced justice itself.
The courtroom becomes a stage. The verdict is already known. The process is the performance.
You can still file your case. You can still cite the Constitution. You can still make eloquent arguments and appeal to precedent. But none of it will matter. The outcome was decided before you ever walked in — not by law, but by design.
And the scariest part? To the average observer, everything will look normal. The legal forms will be filled. The hearings will be held. The judges will issue opinions. But behind the façade, the core has rotted. What remains is law as spectacle: a tool to legitimize power, not restrain it.
That’s not some distant possibility. It’s the direction we’re already moving.
Without Appeal, There Is No Rule of Law
Law only matters if there’s somewhere to go when it’s violated. That’s the meaning of appeal — not just as a legal mechanism, but as a moral foundation. It’s the promise that no matter how powerful the abuser, how brazen the violation, or how high the stakes, there is still a neutral place where truth can be spoken and wrongs can be judged. A place where power is subject to principle. Where facts matter. Where outcomes are not predetermined by political allegiance or personal loyalty.
Take that away, and the entire meaning of law collapses. Not just its structure — its soul.
Without a real system of appeal, law becomes a set of rituals: performative, empty, staged. Rights become suggestions, granted or withheld at the pleasure of those in charge. The Constitution becomes a prop in someone else’s show, invoked for aesthetic, ignored in substance.
Troublingly, the Constitution doesn’t prevent this. It doesn’t guarantee independence, or enforce accountability, or supply courage. It assumes them. Our entire system was built on faith — not religious faith, but institutional faith: that power would check power, that ambition would balance ambition, that leaders would be restrained not just by rules, but by shame.
But shame only works if the powerful feel it. Trump doesn’t. His allies don’t. And the Constitution offers no backup plan for when the people in charge stop pretending they care.
He’s already shown us what happens when no one tells him no. The question now is what happens when no one can.
After the Fall
So what do we do when the courts fall?
We tell the truth. We refuse to pretend the system is still working when it clearly isn’t. We stop clinging to illusions of normalcy, and we start preparing — morally, spiritually, and politically — for what comes next.
Because let’s be clear: the collapse of the rule of law, as we’ve known it, will be a rupture. But it will not be the first. And it may not be the worst.
For most of American history, the law has been an enemy of justice, not an ally. After all, Slavery was legal. Jim Crow was legal. The mass disenfranchisement of women, the persecution of LGBTQ people, the internment of Japanese Americans — all legal. The miracle wasn’t that the law once aligned with justice. The miracle is that, over time, through the sacrifice and struggle of ordinary people, it sometimes came to.
But when that happened, it wasn’t because the courts were generous. It was because movements forced them to listen. It was because people believed in a law higher than the one written by the powerful: a law grounded in love, in justice, and in the unshakable truth that all people are created equal.
That’s the tradition we inherit. And that’s the fight we’re entering again.
When Dr. King was arrested in Birmingham for protesting segregation — a crime under the unjust laws of that time — he did eventually appeal his conviction, all the way to the Supreme Court. But he didn’t wait for the courts to rescue him. From his jail cell, he issued the most powerful defense of civil disobedience in American history. “An unjust law,” he wrote, “is no law at all.” Obedience to such a law, he said, was disobedience to God.
This is what it means to live by a higher law: to walk the path of the prophets, not the politicians. The prophets did not beg for legitimacy from unjust rulers. They stood outside the gates and pronounced judgment. They told the truth, even when it was dangerous. Especially when it was dangerous.
That is our task now.
We are entering a time when obedience will be easy, and conscience will be costly. When cowardice will be dressed up as civility, and complicity will call itself balance. But we’ve seen this before. And we are not the first to face it.
We may not stop the courts from falling. But we can stop ourselves from falling with them. We can still be the people who remember what justice looks like, what truth sounds like, what love requires.
And if we are willing to stand for that — with courage, with clarity, with the willingness to sacrifice — then even in the ruins of the old order, we can begin to build something new.
Not a restoration. A reformation.
Not law as it was. But law as it should be.
Law that serves justice, not power. Law that protects the vulnerable, not the strong. Law that is, in the deepest sense, sacred.
That higher law still exists. And it’s calling us now.
Jason Chukwuma (@truthispeaking) is the creator of TRUTH IS SPEAKING on YouTube and the TRUTH SPEAKS newsletter on Substack, delivering sharp commentary on politics, news, and culture. His work reaches audiences across Instagram, Twitter (never X), Medium, and more, and has been featured on MSNBC and The Daily Beast, establishing him as a rising voice on politics and culture. He is a student at Harvard Law School and a graduate of Harvard College.
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