“Court packing, partisan impeachment, government shutdowns, pardoning allies who commit crimes on the president’s behalf, declaring national emergencies to circumvent Congress. All these actions follow the written letter of the law to subvert its spirit. Legal scholar Mark Tushnet calls such behavior “constitutional hardball.”9 If you examine any failing or failed democracy, you will find an abundance of constitutional hardball: examples include Spain and Germany in the 1930s, Chile in the 1970s, and contemporary Hungary, Venezuela, and Turkey.”
