You're pretty much on it, this set of facts is almost identical to the facts in the OG judicial review case, Marbury v Madison, save for the specific laws in question.

If there is something in the laws that requires the Board of Supervisors to cooperate in the swearing-in or otherwise, then you can ask a court to force them to do it. This is called an application for a writ of mandamus, which is a special court order for a public official to perform a duty that they are required by law to do. You'd think that'd be pointless, but it converts a violation of a random state law (with no specific penalties attached) into a potential violation of a court order, which attaches various coercive powers controlled by the judiciary. One of those powers is imprisonment, for example. To the untrained ear that does sound a bit like criminal punishment, and it really is pretty close. The overall scheme is that public officials must do their duty, lest they be told again by the judiciary, in which case they really must do it.

If I recall, in Marbury v. Madison, the plaintiff had been appointed to some office by the outgoing president, but he hadn't received his official commission by the time that president left office. The plaintiff asked the Court to order the new presidential administration to deliver the commission he was entitled to. The Court refused. The Court decided that it did not have the power to order the executive to do anything. The Court instead described its powers as limited to reviewing whether laws passed or actions taken by the other branches of government were unconstitutional (i.e., a much more influential power).

Marbury v. Madison isn't relevant here because the office was an elected, not appointed, position. There was another case, however, in which the U.S. House of Representatives refused to swear in a new member who had been elected and subsequently convicted of some serious crimes. I don't think the case was litigated though. (If I recall, the elected person resigned.)

You are correct that the Court did not issue a writ. But it was not that "it did not have the power to order the executive to do anything" point blank. It this was on a technicality regarding equivalently either who could issue it, or under what jurisdiction SCOTUS could do it. SCOTUS did not have jurisdiction, as the case was not an appeal from a lower court, and the matter was not one SCOTUS could decide in its original jurisdiction. This last bit about the scope of its original jurisdiction is the famous bit, Justice Marshall got there by asserting SCOTUS could strike down legislation as unconstitutional, including the section of Judiciary Act that would have given them the power to issue the writ. It's quite funny.

Other than that, Marbury was entitled to the remedy of mandamus, so he should have filed in a lower court instead. If he had, that court could have issued the writ or declined to; so too could SCOTUS have heard an appeal and either issued a writ or declined to. (I can't remember if he subsequently tried this.) My reference to Marbury v. Madison sits in between the 1st and 3rd parts of the decision: we (1st) pretend we've ascertained a similar statement to "having this legal title to the office, he has a consequent right to the commission; a refusal to deliver which is a plain violation of that right", and then ignore the (3rd) jurisdiction problem because it's not relevant, simply assume we're filing in a court that does have this power in its original jurisdiction (most of them do, basically only SCOTUS does not).

Bearing in mind that I mainly brought it up to emphasise that this is a problem we've seen before and has better solutions than this guy's idea of getting people to comment on the Board's Facebook page, this is the part (the 2nd part of the decision) that best reflects why I think it's relevant:

> It has already been stated that the applicant has, to that commission, a vested legal right, of which the executive cannot deprive him. He has been appointed to an office, from which he is not removable at the will of the executive; and being so appointed, he has a right to the commission which the secretary has received from the president for his use. The act of congress does not indeed order the secretary of state to send it to him, but it is placed in his hands for the person entitled to it; and cannot be more lawfully withheld by him, than by another person. [...] This, then, is a plain case of a mandamus, either to deliver the commission, or a copy of it from the record; it only remains to be inquired, Whether it can issue from this court.

There is clearly an analogy here, not one that is actually a precedent, but an analogy nonetheless. Focus on "an office, from which he is not removable at the will of the executive", which is what this guy has.

Thank you. I had forgotten the detail about original jurisdiction.

All of this is correct de jure, with the exception that the executive powers that be (i.e. sheriff's dept) can refuse to comply with the court order. Then nobody would be around to enforce the court order.

We prefer not to talk about that kind of total collapse of the rule of law, because it gives people ideas. It is not a necessary or desirable part of the discussion of judicial power. Nevertheless, you can just apply to a higher court and take advantage of their more reliable enforcement apparatus.

Right.

The Governor probably doesn't care about respecting local officials' pettiness, state police would more than suffice.

There are even precedents for the federal executive exercising their power, when Eisenhower used the army to enforce Brown v. Board integration. https://www.history.com/news/little-rock-nine-brown-v-board-...

Or it's too small for them to care to do anything at all.

It's why the traditional strategy to solve this is "get on your local news network and make a fuss."

Not sure if Twitter is effective in the same way.

True, but there are so many "small" issues that it'll get lost. I contacted an investigate journalist about an issue. They declined to run it because there were much bigger issues.

Those weren't "mistakes of the past". They did it on purpose. There is no pathway from educating regular people about ways to circumvent court orders to strengthening the rule of law. Yes, interesting from historical and legal perspectives and thinking about how to design enforcement mechanisms to resist these things, but we weren't talking about that, and Hacker News is not a law reform commission. I am specifically putting up resistance to talking about it in public. It undermines people's confidence in these systems, which are actually very strong, and the resulting reduced participation in the systems that make up the rule of law (e.g. this guy, who is already losing confidence in his local democracy, choosing not to use the courts thinking that his chances of success are slim, and giving up) frees the stage for people who wish to undermine it. I don't propose that this argument is relevant to very many other things besides the kind of abject disobedience you described.

If the processes stink, the correct answer is not enforced ignorance, it is reform. How can we reform without knowledge?

Judicial review of executive actions like these and its mechanisms of enforcement do not stink, rather they are one of the greatest achievements of human civilisation and arguably function better than literally every other part of society in any democracy you care to name. They do not need reform. If they needed reform beyond small calibrations of penalty units, the correct answer would more likely be a civil war.

I don't agree with your position that regular people shouldn't know about cases where rule of law failed, because it might make them question the rule of law.

A strong and resilient democracy is built on transparency, not on hiding information.

Anything that people put resistance towards public disclosure is always a strong smell; not dissimilar to this township refusing to swear in an independent auditor.

It’s a fine distinction. I didn’t say people shouldn’t know. I said we shouldn’t talk about it so casually in a public forum. The information is available to anyone who wants to know.

I learned most of the things that I know without explicitly looking for them. I am glad that this topic came up in this very thread because I would not have learned about Little Rock Nine otherwise.

I am not an American. Maybe neither are you. But I feel compelled to contend with the fact that many Americans are right on the edge of abandoning their democracy. In these circumstances knowledge is not neutral. My aim here was simply to not permit that tiny chunk of non-neutral knowledge to go without context, and I think I have succeeded.

Edit, to put this slightly better: there is a huge difference between keeping something a secret and saying “before I teach you this, I think you should learn these things first”. If the first thing you learned about American civics was that it’s all an illusion and anyone can do what they want, the lesson has utterly failed. You’ve not learned any civics at all.

That’s elitism and is actually an undemocratic ideal. The freedom of ideas is paramount in a Western democracy. And what I was trying to teach others is that the State’s monopoly on violence is what keeps the whole thing running smoothly. For example, the Magna Carta would have meant nothing if it was not backed by the armies of landowning noblemen.

Or you've learned how the system actually works.

> We prefer not to talk about that kind of total collapse of the rule of law, because it gives people ideas.

And because you do not talk about that kind of collapse, you get people like Joe Arpaio who (after years!) finally got convicted for contempt of court - which however did not stop Trump from pardoning him of course.

What ideas?

If the court says one thing and the boss of the executive says another, then the rank and file must decide which side is the just one.

Isn't that the kind of work Federal Marshalls are supposed to do?

It's possible you could do both. If you show them the laws, cert, etc and they still deny you the position, then it does fit the definition of the criminal law. Could be hard to prosecute depending on the exact response.

Which criminal law? See my comment (sibling); failure to perform a public duty is not a crime in itself. There could easily be crimes that are written to address these kinds of scenarios, but you would have to specify which ones. (Edit: oh, OC points out "official oppression" in PA. )