A Prince Who Publicly Scolds His Own Judges Plays a Dangerous Game

A ruler goes before his people and declares that the highest court of his state has made “a bad decision.” He adds that “these are not the people I interviewed” to serve as judges. This is not a legal argument; it is a political move. The case, as described, concerns a mail‑in voting plan the courts have blocked as unlawful. The Supreme Court has upheld that block. The prince answers not with a careful defense of his plan, but with a blistering attack on the tribunal itself. I have seen this play before, in many costumes. When a man quarrels with the law, he must choose whether to fight the sentence or to fight the judges.

In The Prince, as translated by W. K. Marriott, I wrote that most men “judge more by the eye than by the hand.” When a ruler loses in court, the hand has failed; only the eye remains. The effectual truth here is plain: the prince’s plan has been halted, at least for now, and the legal road is unfavorable. He responds by turning the defeat into theater, using a lengthy public message to recast a judicial setback as treachery by his own appointees. This is an appeal over the heads of the robed magistrates to the court of public opinion, where indignation counts for more than jurisprudence. It is fox‑work, not lion‑work, but a fox who insults his own den hollows it out.

Let us begin from necessity, not sermons. A ruler whose project is blocked must think first of survival. As long as his power depends on future elections, anything touching voting rules strikes at his foundations. So he looks at the judgment not as a scholar but as a besieged commander watches a breach in the wall. He needs to maintain the state as he understands it, and above all his place within it. From that vantage, denouncing the ruling as “a bad decision” and questioning the fidelity of the justices can rally his core supporters, who may already distrust courts and welcome every confirmation that the palace of law is an enemy fort. The move binds them to him by shared resentment. It is cheaper to deepen existing hatreds than to build new loves.

But hatred is a dangerous cement. In The Prince I argued it is safer for a ruler to be feared than loved, when he must choose, but never to become hated, because hatred invites conspiracies that fear cannot dissolve. When a prince teaches his followers that law is valid only when it serves him, he risks turning their hatred not merely against particular opponents, but against the very instruments that might one day protect him when fortune turns. Today he scolds judges for upholding a block on his plan; tomorrow, another court may shield him from an overbold rival, a vindictive successor, or foreign accusation. If he has already undermined the dignity of the robe in the eyes of his people, he will have sawed off the branch on which he might sit in his decline.

The Romans faced this twice: once when their tribunes inflamed the people against the Senate’s judgments, and again when powerful men bullied the courts to favor their faction. In the Discourses I praised the tribunate because it gave the people a lawful tongue; but I also warned that when extraordinary authority becomes a habit, republics slide into corruption. The rule is that free institutions can endure fierce criticism, but they cannot be spared every blow and still command reverence. A prince who publicly mocks judges he himself advanced sends a message that selection was personal, not institutional, and that obedience is owed to him, not to the law. This may win a skirmish of reputation, yet it loses ground in the longer war for the state’s stability.

Some will say the prince has no choice. The court has thwarted a central plan; silence would look like weakness; conciliation would anger his base. There is truth in this. Fortune, as I wrote, governs perhaps half of our actions, like a river that floods the plain. The hostile judgment is such a flood. Yet virtù lies in the dykes and barriers raised when the sky was still clear. A prudent ruler would prepare his schemes so they rest on solid legality, or at least on ambiguity, so that when courts speak he can bow without breaking. If instead he advances measures easily judged unlawful, he hands his enemies a weapon and then curses them when they strike. This is not necessity; it is imprudence exposed.

Still, his response is not the coward’s middle course. To go on his public platform and assail the decision and the justices by name is bold. It throws away the mask of harmony between the political and judicial powers and dares the conflict into the open. Sometimes such audacity pays: a prince may so dominate the narrative that judges, anxious for public favor, grow timid. Sometimes, however, the people tire of endless quarrels and look instead to quieter hands who promise peace with the laws. The outcome will depend on whether this prince can transform indignation into durable consent, or whether he merely accelerates a weariness that will first weaken him and then harden against him. Whoever teaches citizens to despise the court must be ready to live, and perhaps to fall, by that lesson.

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