We learned last week that in 2017, Justice Samuel Alito – apparently tired of the drab black robes of a United States Supreme Court justice – donned the ceremonial regalia of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George after receiving the title of knight of the religious and military monarchical order. Given Alito’s craze with far-right European aristocrats like Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis, his enthusiasm for chivalry is perhaps understandable. But the circumstances add up to Alito’s growing disregard for the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law — especially as it concerns him. Like a modern-day Louis XIV, it is clear that Alito believes himself to be untouchable, embodying the famous declaration of the Sun King: the state is me.

Alito’s choice to become a knight of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of St. George, an order led by fringe Italian monarchists, is not just a quirky cosplay, although it certainly is that, too. Knighthoods conferred by princes are, to say the least, far outside the daily experience of most Americans. After all, the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of St. George is not comparable to more familiar fraternal societies like the Knights of Columbus, or lay Catholic orders like the Knights of Malta. Among other key distinctions, the Constantinian Order is attached to a crown and its Grand Master is a future king. This is called a “dynastic order of chivalry”; that is, an order under the patronage of a royal family. Knighthoods like Alito’s were historically conferred by monarchs as a reward for their loyalty or service to the crown.

Today, some defunct European dynasties retain their chivalric orders as a lingering vestige of the power they once held. The Bourbon-Two Sicilies family, which knighted Alito in 2017, has not ruled southern Italy for more than a century. But in the alternate universe of the Constantinian Order, their majesty is intact. Led in the United States by self-proclaimed “monarchists” who actively seek to restore their Bourbon prince to the throne, the Constantinian Order appears to exist primarily to keep the lost monarchy alive: to allow a future king to exercise his hereditary privilege into a miniature kingdom of loyal subjects, and allowing those he deems worthy to bask in the royal splendor.

In contrast, the American republic was founded on an explicit rejection of monarchy and nobility, which its founders viewed as contrary to the principles of equality and equal justice under the law. The authors also recognized that titles, gifts, and other “emoluments” could be used by monarchs and foreign states to increase their influence within the American government. This is why the Constitution places explicit limits on executive power, and why the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause prohibits officers — including Supreme Court justices — from accepting these things without explicit approval from Congress. .

Alito didn’t just join a club. He accepted a great honor from a foreign prince and made a lifelong commitment to that prince.sacred militia.” Like all other Americans, Samuel Alito is free to practice his faith as he wishes, and there is a long history of anti-Catholic sentiment in the United States that unfairly calls into question the loyalty of American Catholics and their ability to hold office. public. Alito, however, accepted knighthood and swore an oath to an order that seeks to restore monarchical power – and to do so by investing that power with the highest religious authority. The Americans who lead the Constantinian Order in the United States subscribe to a “throne and altar” type of monarchism. According to a leading monarchist venerated by these knights, the monarchy of the “throne and altar” considers the Church as the “animating principle of society” which “confers legitimacy and authority to the king via… the ceremonies of the State”, while the monarch exercises power with “God-given authority.” .” This is the type of monarchy embodied by Prince Carlo’s Bourbon ancestor, the same Louis XIV who governed by divine right and sought absolute power.

Alito’s investiture ceremony clearly belongs to this universe of throne and altar: a bishop declared him a knight “under the orders of His Royal Highness Prince Carlo”; the ceremony ended with a Latin prayer for the “strong, pious, prudent and tireless sovereign of this Sacred Order”; and the militaristic paraphernalia and imagery of the order: the capes, the swords and the motto: “in hoc signo vinces” (“in this sign you will conquer”) – all evoke a real history of the use of military force against non-Christians (or “infidels,” as the order has it). website says it). Five years before making the incendiary decision that overthrew Roe v. WadeAlito joined an organization whose ideology aligns religion, political authority and the force of law.

This chivalry was not born in a vacuum. Alito joined in the monarchist and militarist pomp on the eve of the first anniversary of Donald Trump’s election to the presidency, at a time when the white supremacist violence of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville was still fresh. The resurgence of far-right authoritarianism at the time has not abated since. Instead, the years since have seen these ideologies seep into the mainstream, with the United States at the forefront of the global battle for democracy’s survival. In the United States and abroad, the theo-monarchical worldview is predominant among prominent political leaders on the “New law“, like JD Vance, Peter Thiel, Steve Bannon and the coalition of powerful forces behind Project 2025.

Importantly, Alito’s ideological fundamentalism is expressed in the results of his judicial rulings, which have categorically advanced not only his far-right religious views, but also his commitments to monarchical executive power. and uncontrolled which would have been anathema to its founders. After decades of trench work by Alito and his allies in the right-wing legal movement to advance the concept of a dominant “unitary executive,” this worldview has been catapulted into the spotlight – and onto our constitutional law – in this year’s 6-3 decision. Trump v. United Stateswhen, 248 years after the American experiment began, the Court’s so-called “originalists” invented the concept of absolute presidential immunity, giving the American president the powers of a monarch.

Alito’s judicial activism and his air of impunity are only the visible signs of a rot that goes much deeper than a single ignorant judge. All of this comes against the backdrop of a Supreme Court majority that is rightly suffering from historically low public confidence in its legitimacy following a series of blatantly partisan decisions like Dobbs And Trump against the United Statesas well as unprecedented corruption scandals – with Alito often at the center – that Chief Justice John Roberts has been completely unwilling to control. When the Framers carefully designed our system of separate powers and drafted such provisions as the Foreign Emoluments Clause, the tyranny they sought to prevent looked much like This.