Thousands of innocent lives are at stake - why U.S Supreme Court Justice John Roberts must act.

In his 1997 piece on forging a compelling oral argument for the SCHOOL LAW REVIEW journal, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts advised legal authors: ?"If you feel an adverse decision in your case would produce catastrophic consequences,?by all means begin with those. "? ? ? ? ? ??

Now mere weeks into the new Trump presidency, Reuters, the Associated Press, the BBC, the New York Times and other credible reporting organizations are detailing the consequences for millions of the world's most vulnerable women and children of a sudden and quite vicious closure operation at USAID.

Medical specialists on the ground in Sub-Saharan?Africa have been unequivocal in their prognosis?"Without the weekly food supplies provided by USAID, thousands will die!"

Here are three additional judicial, political and humanitarian reasons why the sudden closure of USAID Food Supply operations should be paused indefinitely by Justice John Roberts at the U.S. Supreme Court:

1.? the closure process in use violates the Congressional establishment of USAID as an independent, arms length agency.

2.? the related staff dismissals violate natural justice because they preclude, prevent or make unreasonably arduous access to the right of defense and reply against dismissal without cause for thousands of USAID employees.

3.? failure to pause indefinitely the Executive Order to halt the medical and food supply field operations of USAID places U.S. field staffers' lives in peril. (Reports of threats against?U.S. personnel are already being received in some field locations.)

The longer term repercussions of ending USAID medical and food-supply operations are likely to include:

?a) a sharp increase in anti-American sentiment in many developing countries;

b)??increased recruitment into extremist organizations contributing to future terrorist attacks; and,

c)? unwelcome opportunities for America's rivals, particularly China, to increase support for policies and actors hostile to American interests. ?

The cases currently before Roberts and the US Supreme Court (USSC) requesting a stay in the Trump closure of USAID?are Justice Roberts' ‘Edward Coke’ moment of truth. They represent perhaps the most critical moment in a long, and heretofore, distinguished judicial career!

Will Justice John Roberts, like the Englsh jurist Sir Edward?Coke standing before King James I, and like Archibald Cox before President Richard Nixon, have the courage to standup for the rule of law at a moment when nothing less than the Constitutional Order of the United States is at stake?

If he does, his legacy as one of the great champions of the rule of law, true to the maxim inscribed in stone over the entrance to his law school " non sub homine sed sub deo et lege" is assured?- regardless of the President's predictable complaints and threats.

If on the other hand, Roberts takes the knee and submits to these illegal actions and this egregious power grab by an ignorant President - one who would be "king" - and one who shows little respect for either the rule of law or the Constitutional Order of the United States, then he and we are lost.

And, to paraphrase those threatening oaths used to complete Medieval wills and last testaments,? 'the blood of innocent women and children will forever lie upon his head.'?

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Dr. Brian Richard Joseph studied Jurisprudence, the Sociology of Law, and Legal History at Harvard Law School, the alma mater of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. The maxim quoted in the text, "Non Homine Sed Sub Deo et Sub Lege" may be freely translated from the Latin as "Not by the will of Men but Under God and by the Rule of Law". It is inscribed in stone over the entrance to Langdell Hall at Harvard Law Schoo housing the largest academic law library in the world. Justice Roberts graduated, magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 1979.