A right you cannot enforce is not a right. The idea is as old as the republic. In Marbury v. Madison, in 1803, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote that the United States would cease to be “a government of laws, and not of men.” That would happen, he said, if its laws furnish no remedy “for the violation of a vested legal right.”
I think the Constitution is sound on paper. But paper is all it is until someone can walk into a court and get relief. The rights can stay in the text while the paths to enforce them narrow, and that is what I see happening.
Three paths have narrowed. Qualified immunity shields officials from damages unless the right they broke was “clearly established”. In 2022 the Supreme Court declined to let citizens sue federal agents over new kinds of claims. In 2025 it held that orders blocking a policy for everyone, not only for the people who sued, likely go beyond what courts may do.
Each ruling has its reasons, and judges should not make policy for the whole country from one courtroom. But the sum matters. A person wronged by the government now needs more money, more time, and a closer match to an old case than before.
So when I ask whether the rule of law is holding, I no longer ask only what the text says. I ask who can still get a remedy, how fast, and at what cost.