Sparks: Supreme court nears the end of its term with cases about Donald Trump’s power to be decided - US politics live

Forget the speeches; here is who has leverage: the justices who can define power without wielding it, the president who claims it without precedent, and the republic that must survive them both.

Do not mistake the robe for the man, the office for the virtue, or the judgment for the final word - power is a fire that consumes its vessel.

We have built a government so elaborate we now spend our days debating which part of the machine may rightfully crush the rest.

Soft despotism advances not by breaking the law but by persuading the public that the law is whatever the powerful find convenient.

We won the revolution against the crown only to discover that the desire for a king is a ghost that haunts every republic.

They debate constitutional clauses with great precision, never mentioning the fear that the document itself may be too fragile to contain the man.

The creature - this idea of boundless executive power - now stands at the door of its creator, demanding to know why it was made so strong.

It is a modest proposal that the law, for its own preservation, should simply exempt from its jurisdiction those who find it most inconvenient.

From the defendant’s chair, the law looks different than it does from the bench - less a shield for the republic and more a door for the man who knows how to turn the lock.

The justices retired to consider the limits of authority with the same grave courtesy shown by the wolf who politely asks the sheep to define the boundaries of the meadow.

They debate what power a man may hold over a nation, but I have never known a law that could not be bent by the hand that wrote it.