Monarchies do not always announce themselves with crowns. Sometimes they arrive in gestures — small, unlegislated acknowledgments of who now stands above whom. The transfer of sovereignty is rarely declared; it is absorbed through posture and received as protocol, by who inclines first and who awaits recognition as a matter of station. A republic dies not when ballots are miscounted or norms are battered, but when authority stops flowing upward from the citizenry and begins flowing downward from a single figure — even while the paperwork still pretends otherwise.

🎧 Listen to the narrated edition of “The Court That Crowned Him" (9 min): [ 🎧 Listen to the narrated edition of “The Court That Crowned Him” (9min): https://dunneagin.substack.com/p/af315745-9f43-41fa-b903-86d2e53339fb---]

Most of the country did not mark the moment this inversion became fact, because it did not resemble a coronation. It resembled courtesy. It came during the 2025 State of the Union, not when Trump addressed the nation, but when he entered the House chamber and went first to the Chief Justice, and John Roberts rose to meet him. Roberts rose, not as the head of a coequal of government, not as a constitutional brake, but as a subordinate acknowledging rank. The cameras recorded a greeting; history recorded a bow. While the public mistook the gesture for civility, it was the first public recognition of a sovereign by one who had already ceased to function as his check.

For a republic to survive, its highest jurist must guard the boundary between coequal power and inherited entitlement. Roberts did the opposite. He closed the distance — the ceremonial distance that is the last perimeter of popular sovereignty — and in doing so, he signaled what his decisions had already established: the Court had not merely excused Trump’s rule, it had ordained it. The handshake was only the visible consequence of a deeper transfer already completed on paper. The robes of the Court’s conservatives became coronation vestments.

Roberts is often described as an institutionalist, a guardian of judicial legitimacy. But legitimacy requires neutrality, and neutrality requires humility before the people—not submission to a ruler. His objective has never been to preserve the Court as a constitutional referee. His objective has been preserving the Court as the allocator of sovereignty, the final arbiter not of law but of who may stand above it. He is not the steward of the institution. He is the curator of hierarchy.

Beneath Roberts’s rhetoric of judicial restraint lies something more consequential than caution: management of appearances. Roberts did not merely tolerate the presumptive monarchy Trump now claims — he is the architect of its legal casing. He led the Court’s conservative supermajority in supplying the doctrine of deference that turned presidential/constitutional accountability into optionality, transformed immunity into entitlement, and converted the presidency into a jurisdiction perched above the citizenry rather than derived from them. The Court’s other conservative justices provide zealotry, ideology, and conquest. Roberts provides laundering — the polished procedural surface behind which a transfer of sovereignty could be smuggled into respectability.

He failed the republic.

He placed its leader on a throne.

The fiction that the Court remains a neutral arbiter survives only for those who still believe its function is judgment rather than allocation of power. Roberts has ensured that Trump does not simply occupy office — he stands above it. The executive is no longer a constitutional role that answers to the people; it is a protected station, buffered by priestly guardians who treat scrutiny as sacrilege and constraint as trespass. This constitutional inversion is no longer judicial interpretation. It is enthronement by opinion.

And this was only the beginning.

For the architecture of a presumptive monarchy to hold, reverence must be stabilized into doctrine, and doctrine must be hardened into inevitability. That is where the rest of the Court’s conservatives complete the design.

Alito supplies the theology, espousing the belief that sovereignty is bestowed not by the governed but by an imagined divine preference for the strongman who “restores order.” He writes not as a jurist of a republic but as a minister of punishment, treating the people not as sovereign citizens but as inferiors whose freedoms are tolerations, revocable at the Court’s convenience.

 Thomas supplies the grievance monarchy, espousing sovereignty as retribution. Where Alito offers sanctification, Thomas offers vengeance — a worldview in which the state exists to restore a lost hierarchy, and the Constitution merely confirms the right of the powerful to collect debts against history.

Gorsuch supplies the property logic, espousing sovereignty as corporate estate. To him, the republic is not a compact among its citizenry, but a deed held by the few, and democracy exists only insofar as it does not inconvenience property ownership by that privileged few.

Kavanaugh supplies loyalty, espousing not governance, not principle, only fealty dressed up as jurisprudence. His function in Trump’s presumptive monarchy is ceremonial: the steady vote that proves obedient, the confirmatory nod that signals to the would-be sovereign that the performance will hold.

Barrett supplies sanctification — soft-handed and clerical — transforming subordination into virtue. Her jurisprudence is a sermon about destiny packaged as judicial modesty: the jurist who praises submission as freedom and calls it fidelity to “tradition.”

Each conservative justice serves a different pillar supporting the throne. Together, they complete the tenuous scaffolding of Trump’s presumptive monarchy.

A functioning republic can survive corruption, incompetence, and even periods of executive lawlessness. What it cannot survive is the removal of sovereignty from the citizenry. Once the source of authority shifts upward, elections become a ceremony rather than consent. That is the actual work this Court has completed — not only in its rulings themselves but also in the inversion behind them. They have relocated the Constitution’s origin point of power.

The signature of monarchy is not the crown; it is unanswerability. And this Court has authored unanswerability into doctrine — not accidentally, not gradually, but with precision. They did not merely shield Trump from any possible legal consequences; they reconceived consequence as presumptively illegitimate when directed at him. They carved out a person-shaped exemption from law and pretended that this was constitutional craftsmanship rather than constitutional seizure.

No prior president — not Nixon, not Bush, not Obama — was ever granted what Trump has been given: not discretion, but above-ness. The Court did what even his voters could not do and even Congress would not do — it recast Trump not as an officeholder answerable to the people but as a figure situated above them. A republic ends when the governed are no longer the lender of power.

What this Court built was not immunity. Immunity is still juridical.

They built altitude — legalized elevation for Trump and his presumptive monarchy.

Once the sovereign is no longer accountable to the people, all remains pageantry: retainers rehearsing station, officials auditioning for proximity, state power reorganizing itself around favor rather than consent. Thus, DHS secretary Noem’s $180 million Gulfstream jets are not extravagance but a processional rehearsal. The trappings of monarchy that seep in long before the crown becomes explicit, because the crown is only the symbol. The sovereignty was already relocated.

The constitutional wound is not secrecy. It is a substitution.

The people were not merely sidelined; they were disinherited.

And yet — enthronement requires assent. A throne exists only if someone kneels before it. This presumption is where the Court’s project collides with something older and more immovable than any doctrine: sovereignty in America does not descend. It is loaned. And no court, however robed, can convert a loan of legitimacy into a deed of possession — not without the people’s permission.

The people do not petition for restoration.

They simply withdraw consent.

A monarchy erected by judicial fiat cannot survive once the public stops accepting the illusion that a throne exists. The Court can fabricate prerogative, but it cannot manufacture sovereignty. It may elevate a man, but it cannot become the source of the elevation. It may claim to have crowned him, but crowns forged without the people are gilded counterfeit — impressive until inspected, regal until refused.

The citizenry remains the only sovereign this nation has ever recognized. And the illusion collapses once that sovereign looks up — not in reverence, but in recall. The robes fall back into proportion. The throne reveals itself as a dais with no charter beneath it. The presumptive “king” becomes once again a petitioner, not a ruler.

This reversion is the part the Roberts Court cannot control:  sovereignty does not belong to them and never did.

The enthronement they engineered can be undone not by fury or spectacle, but by the simplest constitutional act of all — the sovereign reclaiming its rightful place and role.

No withdrawal of consent is noisy. It is merely final.

The people are home.

And the crown was never the conservative supermajority’s to give.

~Dunneagin

Monarchies do not always announce themselves with crowns. Sometimes they arrive in gestures — small, unlegislated acknowledgments of who now stands above whom. The transfer of sovereignty is rarely declared; it is absorbed through posture and received as protocol, by who inclines first and who awaits recognition as a matter of station. A republic dies not when ballots are miscounted or norms are battered, but when authority stops flowing upward from the citizenry and begins flowing downward from a single figure — even while the paperwork still pretends otherwise.

🎧 Listen to the narrated edition of “The Court That Crowned Him" (9 min): [ 🎧 Listen to the narrated edition of “The Court That Crowned Him” (9min): https://dunneagin.substack.com/p/af315745-9f43-41fa-b903-86d2e53339fb---]

Most of the country did not mark the moment this inversion became fact, because it did not resemble a coronation. It resembled courtesy. It came during the 2025 State of the Union, not when Trump addressed the nation, but when he entered the House chamber and went first to the Chief Justice, and John Roberts rose to meet him. Roberts rose, not as the head of a coequal of government, not as a constitutional brake, but as a subordinate acknowledging rank. The cameras recorded a greeting; history recorded a bow. While the public mistook the gesture for civility, it was the first public recognition of a sovereign by one who had already ceased to function as his check.

For a republic to survive, its highest jurist must guard the boundary between coequal power and inherited entitlement. Roberts did the opposite. He closed the distance — the ceremonial distance that is the last perimeter of popular sovereignty — and in doing so, he signaled what his decisions had already established: the Court had not merely excused Trump’s rule, it had ordained it. The handshake was only the visible consequence of a deeper transfer already completed on paper. The robes of the Court’s conservatives became coronation vestments.

Roberts is often described as an institutionalist, a guardian of judicial legitimacy. But legitimacy requires neutrality, and neutrality requires humility before the people—not submission to a ruler. His objective has never been to preserve the Court as a constitutional referee. His objective has been preserving the Court as the allocator of sovereignty, the final arbiter not of law but of who may stand above it. He is not the steward of the institution. He is the curator of hierarchy.

Beneath Roberts’s rhetoric of judicial restraint lies something more consequential than caution: management of appearances. Roberts did not merely tolerate the presumptive monarchy Trump now claims — he is the architect of its legal casing. He led the Court’s conservative supermajority in supplying the doctrine of deference that turned presidential/constitutional accountability into optionality, transformed immunity into entitlement, and converted the presidency into a jurisdiction perched above the citizenry rather than derived from them. The Court’s other conservative justices provide zealotry, ideology, and conquest. Roberts provides laundering — the polished procedural surface behind which a transfer of sovereignty could be smuggled into respectability.

He failed the republic.

He placed its leader on a throne.

The fiction that the Court remains a neutral arbiter survives only for those who still believe its function is judgment rather than allocation of power. Roberts has ensured that Trump does not simply occupy office — he stands above it. The executive is no longer a constitutional role that answers to the people; it is a protected station, buffered by priestly guardians who treat scrutiny as sacrilege and constraint as trespass. This constitutional inversion is no longer judicial interpretation. It is enthronement by opinion.

And this was only the beginning.

For the architecture of a presumptive monarchy to hold, reverence must be stabilized into doctrine, and doctrine must be hardened into inevitability. That is where the rest of the Court’s conservatives complete the design.

Alito supplies the theology, espousing the belief that sovereignty is bestowed not by the governed but by an imagined divine preference for the strongman who “restores order.” He writes not as a jurist of a republic but as a minister of punishment, treating the people not as sovereign citizens but as inferiors whose freedoms are tolerations, revocable at the Court’s convenience.

 Thomas supplies the grievance monarchy, espousing sovereignty as retribution. Where Alito offers sanctification, Thomas offers vengeance — a worldview in which the state exists to restore a lost hierarchy, and the Constitution merely confirms the right of the powerful to collect debts against history.

Gorsuch supplies the property logic, espousing sovereignty as corporate estate. To him, the republic is not a compact among its citizenry, but a deed held by the few, and democracy exists only insofar as it does not inconvenience property ownership by that privileged few.

Kavanaugh supplies loyalty, espousing not governance, not principle, only fealty dressed up as jurisprudence. His function in Trump’s presumptive monarchy is ceremonial: the steady vote that proves obedient, the confirmatory nod that signals to the would-be sovereign that the performance will hold.

Barrett supplies sanctification — soft-handed and clerical — transforming subordination into virtue. Her jurisprudence is a sermon about destiny packaged as judicial modesty: the jurist who praises submission as freedom and calls it fidelity to “tradition.”

Each conservative justice serves a different pillar supporting the throne. Together, they complete the tenuous scaffolding of Trump’s presumptive monarchy.

A functioning republic can survive corruption, incompetence, and even periods of executive lawlessness. What it cannot survive is the removal of sovereignty from the citizenry. Once the source of authority shifts upward, elections become a ceremony rather than consent. That is the actual work this Court has completed — not only in its rulings themselves but also in the inversion behind them. They have relocated the Constitution’s origin point of power.

The signature of monarchy is not the crown; it is unanswerability. And this Court has authored unanswerability into doctrine — not accidentally, not gradually, but with precision. They did not merely shield Trump from any possible legal consequences; they reconceived consequence as presumptively illegitimate when directed at him. They carved out a person-shaped exemption from law and pretended that this was constitutional craftsmanship rather than constitutional seizure.

No prior president — not Nixon, not Bush, not Obama — was ever granted what Trump has been given: not discretion, but above-ness. The Court did what even his voters could not do and even Congress would not do — it recast Trump not as an officeholder answerable to the people but as a figure situated above them. A republic ends when the governed are no longer the lender of power.

What this Court built was not immunity. Immunity is still juridical.

They built altitude — legalized elevation for Trump and his presumptive monarchy.

Once the sovereign is no longer accountable to the people, all remains pageantry: retainers rehearsing station, officials auditioning for proximity, state power reorganizing itself around favor rather than consent. Thus, DHS secretary Noem’s $180 million Gulfstream jets are not extravagance but a processional rehearsal. The trappings of monarchy that seep in long before the crown becomes explicit, because the crown is only the symbol. The sovereignty was already relocated.

The constitutional wound is not secrecy. It is a substitution.

The people were not merely sidelined; they were disinherited.

And yet — enthronement requires assent. A throne exists only if someone kneels before it. This presumption is where the Court’s project collides with something older and more immovable than any doctrine: sovereignty in America does not descend. It is loaned. And no court, however robed, can convert a loan of legitimacy into a deed of possession — not without the people’s permission.

The people do not petition for restoration.

They simply withdraw consent.

A monarchy erected by judicial fiat cannot survive once the public stops accepting the illusion that a throne exists. The Court can fabricate prerogative, but it cannot manufacture sovereignty. It may elevate a man, but it cannot become the source of the elevation. It may claim to have crowned him, but crowns forged without the people are gilded counterfeit — impressive until inspected, regal until refused.

The citizenry remains the only sovereign this nation has ever recognized. And the illusion collapses once that sovereign looks up — not in reverence, but in recall. The robes fall back into proportion. The throne reveals itself as a dais with no charter beneath it. The presumptive “king” becomes once again a petitioner, not a ruler.

This reversion is the part the Roberts Court cannot control:  sovereignty does not belong to them and never did.

The enthronement they engineered can be undone not by fury or spectacle, but by the simplest constitutional act of all — the sovereign reclaiming its rightful place and role.

No withdrawal of consent is noisy. It is merely final.

The people are home.

And the crown was never the conservative supermajority’s to give.

~Dunneagin