The Lawful Betrayal: How Legality Became the Engine of Constitutional Decay

This paper examines the transformation of legality from a protective framework into an instrument of constitutional erosion within the modern United States. Focusing on the judiciary’s evolving relationship with executive power, it argues that legal reasoning has shifted from the language of restraint to the logic of accommodation. Through this inversion, the law no longer limits authority but rationalizes it—creating what this study terms lawful betrayal, a process in which the preservation of form conceals the destruction of substance.Drawing on the Ninth Circuit’s 2025 decision concerning the Portland National Guard deployment, the paper situates the episode within a broader trajectory of judicial deference, administrative normalization, and moral exhaustion. It traces how the constitutional guardianship once vested in the courts has devolved into procedural complicity, transforming legality itself into a vehicle of decay.By connecting constitutional doctrine to ethical philosophy and institutional behavior, The Lawful Betrayal illuminates how obedience to legal form can become indistinguishable from collaboration in constitutional decline. The study concludes by outlining the ethical conditions necessary for law to recover its defensive character—a moral reawakening that must precede any institutional reform.