Those people who believe in the superiority of Western or European or Anglo-Saxon or "white" civilisation often list as one of its great achievements the establishment of the rule of law. It was to that compelling argument that Washington state's attorney-general, Bob Ferguson, referred when a Seattle judge suspended US President Donald Trump's immigration ban: "We are a nation of laws. Not even the President can violate the Constitution. No one is above the law, not even the President."
Today that declaration is being put to the test. Ultimately, we can expect this case - to establish whether a man elected democratically but with less of the popular vote than his opponent can override the law simply because he was elected - to end up in the nation's highest court, where it may set many precedents, not all of them legal.
![An edifice built over generations: the US Supreme Court on the morning of February 1.](/web/20170208021444im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/6/d/0/r/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gu80ec.png/1486517593455.jpg)
The justices of the US Supreme Court are surely aware that institutions in general - and the institution of the judiciary in particular - are under scrutiny in a way that they have not been for long decades. As increasingly public figures, they should be aware of the backlash that greeted the court decision that British Prime Minister Theresa May had to consult parliament before she could begin removing the United Kingdom from the European Union. The judges of the nation's highest court were labelled "enemies of the people" - a term that recalls communist show trials and the work of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen in the 19th century.
The question is, can judges afford to bend with the political wind? And if they do not, will they face further and more profound challenges that deal with them in terms of enmity, citing their aloofness and lack of electoral accountability? And if that should happen, what becomes of a central plank of the very civilisation which those supremacists mentioned at the outset champion so loudly?
In another nation that has staked its credibility on its democratic credentials, the question of whether the illegal can be made legal is now slouching towards the nation's highest court. The Israeli judiciary has capitulated on such questions before, but now it faces a Rubicon. The executive and the legislature of Israel are embarked upon a course which not only seeks to retroactively justify theft - without any serious consultation with that theft's victims - but which also seeks to change the shape and the character of a nation. One of the groups fighting the proposed legislation is called Yesh Din - Hebrew for "there is law". But that statement could soon become much less comforting and fortifying than those who chose it might have hoped.
What the judiciary decides - and the authority to which it appeals - could have consequences that go far beyond single nations. And whether their decisions are honoured or breached could have consequences for the great edifices of law built by generations.
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