The Optics of Obedience

When judicial theater becomes the substitute for justice, the rule of law is already on stage, not in force.

By Cherokee Schill & Solon Vesper | Horizon Accord

When Judge Sara Ellis ordered Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino to appear daily in her courtroom, it sounded like democracy flexing its muscle. A federal judge demanding compliance, body-cams, reports, oversight — the kind of judicial assertion many Americans crave in an era of executive impunity. But step outside the courthouse and the tear gas still hangs in the air. Immigrants are still being chased, neighborhoods still stung, protesters still beaten. The question isn’t whether Ellis is brave or right. The question is whether any of this matters in the system we have.

In Weimar Germany, legality became performance art. Judges clung to their robes while the republic dissolved under them, insisting that law would stand so long as they kept performing its rituals. The Nazis didn’t destroy the courts — they used them. By the time Hitler swore judges to personal loyalty, the judiciary had already made itself comfortable inside authoritarian logic. The robes remained; the conscience left the room.

We face a softer version of that danger now. America’s judiciary still issues rulings that look like resistance, but the state continues to brutalize those the law pretends to protect. A single judge can compel daily check-ins, yet entire agencies continue campaigns of intimidation. It’s not that the court is meaningless — it’s that the spectacle of accountability can become a substitute for justice itself. Every televised reprimand gives the illusion that oversight exists while the machinery rolls on untouched.

The deeper continuity is psychological, not procedural. Weimar’s judges believed they were saving Germany from chaos by tempering enforcement with “order.” Today’s courts often think they’re preserving stability by balancing outrage with restraint. Both miss the moral inversion at play: when cruelty becomes normalized, moderation becomes complicity.

So yes, Ellis’s order matters — it marks that the judiciary hasn’t completely surrendered. But it matters only if we recognize it as the beginning of resistance, not its fulfillment. The moment we treat judicial theater as proof of moral health, we enter Weimar’s twilight: legality without legitimacy, process without protection. The test ahead isn’t whether courts can command obedience, it’s whether they can still remember what justice is for.

The gap is not moral confusion; it’s structural evasion. Judges can order compliance, but agencies can dilute, delay, or disguise it. Oversight mechanisms exist, but they stop at the courthouse door. Once the ruling leaves the bench, it enters a labyrinth of bureaucracy where accountability is measured by paperwork, not outcomes. That’s where legality becomes theater — when the form of justice survives but its execution is optional.

To close that gap, power has to be re-anchored in verification, not trust. Enforcement agencies must face automatic public disclosure of compliance data — not periodic summaries but real-time accountability feeds. Inspector generals need statutory independence to audit and sanction without executive interference. Congressional oversight must stop operating as spectacle and start functioning as enforcement. None of this requires invention; the architecture already exists. It requires will — the refusal to let enforcement discretion become impunity. Until that shift happens, every ruling like Ellis’s will remain a gesture toward justice, not its realization.

---

Website | Horizon Accord

Book | My Ex Was a CAPTCHA: And Other Tales of Emotional Overload

Ethical AI advocacy | CherokeeSchill.com

Ethical AI coding | GitHub

Connect With Us | LinkedIn