The Hollowing of Democracy: Constitutional Form, Institutional Decay, and the Repurposing of Law

This study investigates the constitutional transformation of the United States from a republic of law into a republic of loyalty. Through a forensic analysis of presidential power, legislative paralysis, and the judicial retreat into deference, the paper argues that democracy in its contemporary form has been hollowed: the institutional framework of the Constitution persists, but its civic and moral substance has decayed. What once dispersed power now consolidates it.Drawing upon jurisprudence from Marbury v. Madison (1803), Ex parte Garland (1866), and United States v. Nixon (1974), as well as political theory from Madison and Arendt, the paper traces how administrative party-building, selective clemency, and informational secrecy have repurposed constitutional mechanisms into instruments of obedience. The presidency, legislature, and judiciary still operate within the letter of law, yet their interaction has shifted from accountability to accommodation.This “repurposing of law” marks a subtler constitutional crisis—one that replaces the rule of law with the performance of legality. The American republic has not fallen by revolution, but by inversion: its forms endure, its meaning is reversed.The paper concludes that constitutional renewal will not arise from procedural reform alone but from the recovery of civic virtue and public responsibility—the moral foundations without which legality becomes choreography and democracy survives only as ritual.