He understood that the robe was supposed to outlast any president, that judges endure while administrations come and go. But watching norms decay in real time, he saw that endurance turning into complicity. The threat wasn’t a single outrageous order; it was the steady pressure to bend, to flatter, to pretend nothing had changed while everything was being tested. Inside those marble halls, colleagues avoided certain words, certain topics, as if truth itself might be contempt of court.
So he did the one thing the system never expects: he made his fear public. Not to become a hero, and not because it would fix the families whose rent, food, and medicine depend on rulings no one televises. He resigned to leave a record. To say that someone inside the fortress saw the walls shaking, and chose, finally, to shout instead of watch them fall in silence.
