THE third important U.S. constitutional “power center” is the Supreme Court and federal judges, which can check the president and Congress if either abuses their authority.

Supreme Court justices and federal judges are appointed for life. They are nominated by presidents and approved by the Senate. The House has no vote in court appointments. Why not? Was the judiciary ever intended to feel any allegiance to the common people?

The Supreme Court, like high courts in most nations, reflects the same legacy from feudalism as the president and the Senate. The term “court” itself derives from monarchy. Willful kings in court chambers once settled all disputes. (Remember King Solomon?) We can thank angry English barons in 1215 for the Magna Carta. Their insistence on curbing an abusive monarch gave to us the modern moral and political principle of a leader ruled by the law.

Politics create the laws before they reach the courts, which apply the laws. In a republic or democracy, judges must stay within the law, uphold trial by jury, and ignore political bias. Judicial independence is the best guarantor of equal justice under the law.

Does the U.S. Supreme Court embody fairness? In the close 2000 presidential election, the Democratic candidate won the popular vote. Then Fox News preemptively reported a Republican win in crucial Florida. The High Court intervened to stop a disputed Florida recount, effectively selecting a president instead of letting voters elect one.

If the Supreme Court had not acted, an Electoral College deadlock was possible. In that event, the Constitution provides for the House of Representatives to decide the election. Because the Republican Party controlled the House in 2000, the GOP still would have won, but the House was denied its due vote under the Constitution. Was the High Court’s action unconstitutional? Like the discounted and uncounted voters in Florida, were all Americans disenfranchised?

Is the U.S. Supreme Court a trustworthy body? Do the president’s appointees erode our trust? Will today’s Supreme Court ever reverse such unconstitutional measures as those in the Patriot Act?

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LIKE Paine wrote about the English Constitution, it’s a fallacy to say the U.S. Constitution is a balanced union of three separate powers —executive, legislative, judicial—reciprocally checking one another. The phrase “separation of powers” rarely has real meaning beyond symbolic rhetoric. Cases may be cited where one government branch stopped abuses by another branch, but do not be fooled.

U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s, for instance, ordered all of his administration officials to stop testifying before the “unAmerican activities” committee of Sen. Joe McCarthy, the surly pursuer of communists in America; his tactics mirrored his foes in Moscow. When “Ike” cut off political support, McCarthy was primed for prime-time TV demolition by Edward R. Morrow and a free press. The “witch hunts” ended. The “blacklists” ended.

But Eisenhower acted only after McCarthy publicly humiliated a presidential war buddy. McCarthyism was halted only by personality politics, not by the Constitution. This was far better than no restraints at all on power and ambition. However, please observe the failure by “the rule of law” in curbing a nascent dictatorship in America.

More recently, Republicans in Congress told K Street lobbyists in Washington, DC, to hire only Republican staffers and contribute only to Republican campaigns, or else they’d be denied access to majority GOP legislators. The press reported the “pay to play” scheme in 2004, and a top lobbyist went to jail for corruption, but know that nothing in the Constitution has ever halted such abuses of power.