A term of endearment is a word or phrase used to address or describe a person, animal or inanimate object for which the speaker feels love or affection. Terms of endearment are used for a variety of reasons, such as parents addressing their children and lovers addressing each other.

“You have a dirty face too, dear.”

Today – for no particular reason that I can now project – I have recalled several adages relating to legitimacy (conformity to law or to rules). My favourite – Nemo dat quod non habet (No one gives what he does not have). This maxim can be applied very broadly. It means for instance that if the constitution does not authorize you to do so, you haven’t any right to do so. It means that if you are an appointee of a person, you haven’t the right to transfer that appointment to another (unless your appointment specifically says so). It would apply to an Attorney for Property Management or Personal Care; or, to an executor. The restriction also applies to a homeowner who has mortgaged the property – the notion being that the homeowner is incapable of selling his place unless the lender agrees (which usually means the mortgage is either paid out of the sale proceeds or the buyer is approved to assume payment of the mortgage).

Another closely related adage is, “You cannot do indirectly what you cannot do directly.” Often legal schemes such as these are advanced with perilous outcome.

There are a number of cautionary adages relating to forbidden general behaviour, such as, “Don’t bite the hand that feeds”, “Don’t burn your bridges”. And – if one were threatened with legal action – one should naturally be wary about how one speaks of the judges in the legal system. I mention this because the news today was pregnant with the vulgar rhetoric of the president of the United States of America.

Trump called those (Supreme Court Justices) who ruled against his tariffs a “disgrace to our nation.”

Trump’s blustery tantrum was followed by a reactionary announcement (though of muted effect):

President Trump announced his intent to sign an executive order later today imposing a 10% global tariff on all nations under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974.

Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 gives the president authority to impose tariffs of up to 15% for up to 150 days to address trade deficits or a dollar crisis. Because it operates under a separate legal authority from IEEPA, today’s Supreme Court ruling does not affect it.

This extraordinary political scene unfolding in the media is being interpreted as the beginning of the end for Trump. The Americans (including many Republicans) are now being asked to vote for a democratic constitution or an oligarchy. The circus show of Trump does nothing to address the substantive government of the country – while at the same time tightening the noose about his own neck (particularly as the Epstein files are boiling over worldwide):

Epstein files

The Epstein files are a partially released collection of millions of documents, images, videos, and emails detailing the activities of American financier and convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, including his social circle of public figures, politicians, and celebrities.

As of February 2026, individuals whose names show up frequently in the files include: Epstein’s assistant Lesley Groff (157,613 mentions), accountant Richard Kahn (52,781 mentions), US president Donald Trump and his wife Melania Trump (more than 38,000 references), lawyer Darren Indyke (17,783 mentions), sex trafficker and socialite Ghislaine Maxwell (13,169 mentions), and modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel (4,727 mentions).

Bill, you have put your finger on something more subtle than the day’s headlines.

You begin with a term of endearment — “You have a dirty face too, dear.” There is affection even in mild rebuke. That is how healthy authority sounds: corrective, but not contemptuous. Law at its best carries that tone. It disciplines without humiliating. It restrains without degrading.

The maxim you favour — nemo dat quod non habet — is more than a rule of conveyancing. It is a moral architecture. Power must trace back to a lawful source. Title must be rooted. Authority must be granted before it is exercised. When that chain is broken, what remains is not legitimacy but assertion.

The related principle — that one cannot accomplish indirectly what one is forbidden to do directly — is really an extension of the same moral geometry. It rejects cleverness as a substitute for authority. It is the court’s way of saying: substance prevails over stratagem.

Against that background, the spectacle you describe takes on a particular character.

When a president publicly disparages justices for ruling against him, the legal issue is almost secondary. Judges are meant to be criticized; that is part of republican life. But rhetoric that delegitimizes the judiciary itself is different. It attempts to sever the chain of lawful authority and replace it with personality. The suggestion becomes: legitimacy flows from me.

That is the inversion of nemo dat. In a constitutional order, officeholders receive power; they do not originate it. The constitution gives. They have.

As for the invocation of Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, it is a technical pivot — a shift from one statutory footing to another. Entirely legal, assuming procedural compliance. But legality in the narrow sense does not exhaust legitimacy in the broader sense. A pattern of governing through emergency levers and maximal executive discretion tests the boundaries of republican design. One may be within the letter and still eroding the spirit.

You mention cautionary adages — don’t burn bridges, don’t bite the hand that feeds. Those are folk analogues of constitutional restraint. They remind us that power exists within relationships. When leaders habitually scorn other institutions — courts, legislatures, allies — they expend a kind of political capital that cannot be easily replenished.

As for the Epstein materials and the circulation of names: volume of reference is not proof of culpability. In law, proximity is not guilt. Yet politically, association corrodes. The public square is not a courtroom; it operates on inference, suspicion, narrative. That is perilous terrain for any leader whose authority depends heavily on personal projection.

You suggest this may be the beginning of the end. History is rarely so tidy. Democratic systems are resilient, but they are not self-maintaining. They rely on habits — of restraint, of respect, of deference to lawful process — that cannot be compelled by statute alone.

In that sense, your opening thought about endearment is not accidental. A constitutional republic requires a certain civic affection — a willingness to say, even in disagreement, “dear.” When politics becomes pure contempt, the structure remains, but its animating spirit thins.

You spent a lifetime in a profession where words matter and authority must be grounded. It is perhaps no surprise that what unsettles you is not merely the policy, but the tone — the sense that the chain of lawful giving and receiving is being strained.

The maxim still stands. No one gives what he does not have. And no officeholder possesses authority that the constitution does not first bestow.