Has Trump Violated the Titles of Nobility Clause?

 

You may be wondering, as I am, whether President Trump’s announcement “Long live the king” with a picture of the President wearing a crown, violates  Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution.   “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States. . . .”  

There can be no disputing that “King” is a title of nobility, usually the highest such title. Titles of nobility historically have been awarded by the head of state. Trump is the head of state, and granted himself the title of King. Looks pretty open and shut.

One cannot become king by self-declaration?  Tell that to William the Conqueror or Henry IV.

Before we start looking around for who or what might have standing to challenge this executive action in court, however, we must meet the objection that the president was just kidding around. He didn’t really intend to make himself royalty. He did not think he was granting to himself any powers of kingship. (Well, clearly he thinks he should have more of such powers, but nothing his Supreme Court won’t find implied by the "very structure," if not any clause, of the Constitution.)

In any event, the contention that a grant of nobility must be a grant of powers misreads the Constitution or misunderstands noble status or both. The Constitution neither says nor implies anything about powers of nobility. What it prohibits is any grant of a title. Only a very few of the nobility of Britain have any powers just by having the title. There are thousands of knights, for example, whose only power is to be able to require official personages and documents to use “Dame” or “Sir” in referring to them and to follow their name with the designation of their order of knighthood, e.g. “OBE.”

O.K. but Trump wasn’t doing even that. He really was just kidding. Can’t you take a joke?!

There is some merit in this objection, but it takes us into the murky waters of Trump’s intentions. With normal people a pretty sharp line can usually be drawn between lying and truth telling, between joking and straight talk, even between exaggerating and being facually accurate.

We have a great deal of evidence, however, that when Trump says anything his chief concern, often his only concern, is what effects it will have: effects in the press, on his base, on his congresspeople, on Putin, on his foes. Many of Trump’s many catalogued lies are not lies at all in the strictest sense. They do not rise to the dignity of lies because Trump does not consider whether they are true or not when he says them. He doesn’t care. He is focused single mindedly on their effect.

Analogous cautions need to be applied when Trump is apparently speaking in the imperative mood rather than the declarative. For example, there was, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” Grammatically, this is a fairly standard declarative about the speaker’s state of mind transmuted into a solicitation by its prefatory phrase. Trump famously responded to the backlash, surprisingly mild though it was, by explaining that this was neither a statement about his actual hopes nor a request to the Russians. It was all just kidding. Some of us thought this a bit disingenuous.

There have been many other examples of Trump’s making statements or requests or asking questions where he is prepared to back off to “just kidding” if necessary. For critics he was kidding. For friends it was serious.

The crowning of a sovereign like knight-dubbing is a special sort of speech act. It is accomplished when the right words are said in the right setting by the right person. Just what were Trump’s beliefs and intentions in these respects? Murk again. 

I think we can be sure that he would like to have more of the power of and to be treated more with the reverence of a real king. Would he object if all men and boys took of their hats when his procession passed on the street?  If people started making him a little bow? If “your excellency” was revived from the early days of the republic? If a grant could be given to support the work of the aspiring young historian who argues that Colonel Nicola was right in 1782: Washington should have taken the title and role of king? 

One step at a time.

Of course it was “just kidding,” still . . .

Addendum:

The day this was posted President Trump asked the Governor of Maine, Janet Mills, whether she was following his executive order on transgender participation in sports. She responded that she was following federal and state law. Trump: "We are the federal law." 

Louis XIV: "L'État, c'est moi" April 13, 1655, Parlement of Paris.