The Constitution Against Itself: Self-Immunizing Sovereignty and the Irreversible Decay of American Constitutional Order

This paper investigates the paradox of a constitutional system that has become the instrument of its own erosion. In modern American governance, presidential and administrative power have evolved into a form of self-immunizing sovereignty—a structure that transforms constitutional authorization into a mechanism of constitutional decay. Through this process, legality itself becomes self-destructive: emergency powers, pardon authority, and executive immunity are invoked not to defend the Constitution, but to protect those who undermine it.Drawing on constitutional jurisprudence, political theory, and contemporary institutional behavior, the study demonstrates how legality has replaced legitimacy as the organizing principle of American governance. The Constitution’s mechanisms of balance—executive discretion, congressional oversight, and judicial restraint—have entered a phase of mutual exhaustion, each reinforcing the other’s abdication.The paper argues that the crisis of the American republic is no longer one of open defiance but of lawful decay—a structural exhaustion in which obedience to form conceals the loss of substance. It concludes by outlining the moral conditions required for the restoration of civic conscience and constitutional self-correction.