I thought that Americans were generally opposed to aristocracy and the concept of nobility. We even had the sentiment written into our Constitution!
No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.
Some of us have that principle imbedded in our generally held principles, but to be real about it, there have always been Americans who desire and envy the label of an unearned title. They’re generally conservative and rich, but those snobs are honestly American. They’re just wrong.
So what kind of person would happily accept a title of nobility from a foreign organization? Would you believe it would be arch-“originalist”, worshipper of their interpretation of the Constitution, Founding Father cultist, and Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito?
The Intelligencer has a story today that actually happened several years ago but — not unlike Alito’s Upside-Down Flag nonsense — didn’t register with the public at the time. As we noted last week, Alito has been taking expensive gifts — as the conservative Supreme Court justices are wont to do! — from a right-wing German princess, but it turns out he’s been cultivating more ties to the European aristocracy.
It turns out the last time Donald Trump was president, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, author of the Dobbs decision setting women’s health care back a few centuries, added a knighthood to his own résumé, pledging an oath to the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George. The knighthood, bestowed in 2017, wasn’t widely reported at the time, but the order’s website was updated in July with Alito’s investiture on the front page.
Cool. I can see where Alito would find the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George appealing — it’s an extremely Catholic organization that fawns over the Papacy. It has only 3000 members and seems to be mainly about grandiloquent cosplaying with elaborate symbols and rituals (they also have a charitable angle of providing food aid to stricken communities in Europe, to their credit). It’s mostly harmless and just a kind of stupid posturing, but sheesh, a Supreme Court justice ought to avoid flagrantly violating the letter of the Constitution…
Oh. Wait. Our current crop of Supreme Court justices are all about partisan bias and shredding the egalitarian principles of the Constitution.
Never mind.
Not seeing it myself. Despite all the rituals and silly costumes, it isn’t any sort of aristocracy, any more than the Knights of Columbus are. Even “real” (i.e., granted by royalty, which this isn’t) knighthoods aren’t hereditary. Silly but harmless, unlike the flag incidents.
John Harshmsn:
Want to rethink your position?
Well, from a woman who has the family name “Prinzessin von Thurn und Taxis”. There are no actual noble titles in Germany.
My guess is that the “Constantinian Order” perhaps doesn’t count as a “King, Prince, or foreign State”. Though according to the website “Since 1759, the position of Constantinian Grand Master has passed by strict male primogeniture to each successive senior male descendant of King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies” and that the current head is “His Royal Highness Prince Pedro of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, Duke of Calabria”.
Also who actually heads the order is disputed since there is another “Constantinian Order” headed by Prince Carlo of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, Duke of Castro; its website is at https://constantinianorder.net/ Both orders have snarfed Roman Catholic clerics as officials, the former had José Manuel Estepa Llaurens who had also been Military Archbishop of Spain and a cardinal and has Timothy Broglio, Archbishop for the Military Services, USA and the latter Cardinal Marcello Semeraro.
I guess the question is whether the head of the former counts as a “Prince” in the sense of the US Constitution given that he doesn’t actually rule any land (and his ancestors haven’t since 1861 when they were deposed by Garibaldi and their kingdom incorporated into modern Italy).
@3. lasius : Not even the noblest title of highest eats steam DonOld Von Schtizenpants?
( https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-von-shitzinpantz-has-formally-been-entered-into-the-record-2024-5 )
I blame the founder-dudes for being too naive: putting “rules” and “prohibitions” & stuff in the Constitution without strong “enforcement provisions”.
As The Supremely Deplorable Six has pointed out with their trashing of the 14th Amendment disqualification of insurrectionists: Congress didn’t bother passing ‘enforcement’, so no effect.
They also didn’t pass ‘enforcement’ of ‘natural born citizen’, ’35 and over’, ‘lived in the US long enough’, ‘already had two terms’.
Really, the Founder-dudes should have included: “violaters may be killed without penalty by any citizen”. Anything less would just get waved away.
#1 Did you read the article? It clearly addresses what the concern is.
“Alito would probably say that this is no big deal because his knighthood is mostly play-acting and he’s not going to be called upon to legally bail out the Bourbons any time soon. Which is probably true but not the point. Knighthood was already a joke at the nation’s founding and the Framers still saw fit to include this language. No one was donning a suit of armor anymore, but the title still held symbolic weight. In fact, as the Hamilton passage notes, they were worried MORE about fundamentally meaningless titles because officials in a Republic can be swayed for so little. The Framers sought to protect against the idea that the nation’s democratic ideals and frontier ethic could be sold cheap even if the transaction never gave rise to some Münchenian Candidate. They just feared foreign influence bribing a vain, petty official with a fancy if meaningless title.”
#3 start with wiki. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nobility
#4 It is an order under the auspices of The Vatican, read Pope. So yes, it does cound as “King, Prince or foreign State”
“The position of Grand Master of the Constantinian Order and the position of Head of the Royal House of the Two Sicilies are separate dignities. Succession to the position of Grand Master is governed by canon law, that is, the set of laws governing the Roman Catholic Church.”
https://constantinianorder.us/about/
As for the schism. Just a typical Catholic thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Military_Constantinian_Order_of_Saint_George
At the end of the day it is an organization a Supreme Court Justice should not be a member of.
#9 Under your interpretation, wouldn’t Congress have to approve the acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize by any government official?
The Nobel Foundation is an Independent entity, even if the Swedish and Norwegian kings physically hand out the Prizes.
BTW the Norwegian Peace Price is a much more fun event, with lots of good musicians. The Swedish event (all the other prizes) tends to be too formal in my opinion.
.
The independence of the Nobel Price dud not matter to China; when a Chinese dissident got the Peace Price the entire country was subjected to collective punishment. President Xi sucks.
Apparently, it is not unlawful, or he’d get taken to Court.
(Oh, wait…)
Prosecuting any federal officeholder for accepting any foreign emolument would create a terrible precedent – someone might think it applied to some other (present or former) federal officeholder!
@8 Bruce Fuentes
What are you trying to show me with this?
I didn’t realize that there were that many German aristocrats left after WWI until I heard this story.
Correction: after WWII
@15 Akira MacKenzie
There aren’t really. These “titles” are just their names now. They are as much princesses and barons as Martin Luther King was a King or James Earl Jones was an Earl.
And their noble associations are as official as a ren fair.
a title of nobility from a foreign organization?
A knighthood is not a title of nobility. It still looks a bit ill-advised for a US Supreme Court Judge to acceft such an honour.
I thought that Americans were generally opposed to aristocracy and the concept of nobility.
I think many have regretted this which seems why former ambassadors and judges seem to be addressed by their titles. Then we also see things like “Henry Ford the Third”.
Think in terms of global societal strata.
Contacts, cred.
Or, to keep it simpler: not de jure, but sorta (not quite) de facto.
(Always there will be an upper crust; we monkey-types do like our status games)
@ 17
I figured that was the case, I just found it odd that the “royalty” of an empire that died just over a century ago thinks they have any clout at all.
The founders would have cared about the king they’d just overthrown handing out titles to would-be counterrevolutionaries, not about silly titles in mystic societies.
The panic about these secret societies goes back centuries in America. In reality, they’re just social clubs.
@ 20
Since in West Germany they weren’t expropriated, many of these “noble” families unfortunately still have quite a bit of money. And money brings clout, as always.