Lucius Marcius Philippus and President Obama

         Lucius Marcius Philippus and President Obama


President Obama at his State of the Union, January 27, 2010, made a strongly worded remark about the Supreme Court.  The Supreme Court had recently handed down a decision allowing corporations to contribute money to election campaigns.   When the President's remark was made, numerous supporters stood around and behind the seated Supreme Court members and screamed and cheered.  By protocol members of the Court are expected to remain nonpartisan.  Chief Justice Roberts on March 9,  2010, while talking to law students at University of Alabama expressed concern about such a remark in a setting which is supposed to have dignity and decorum.

It occurred to me that Chief Justice Roberts, within bounds of Supreme Court etiquette, was making a defense of the Court's dignity.  As the Chief Justice, he felt in his opinion that there was a need, in the face of, what he considered, blatant outright denigration of the Court's standing, to come to its defense.

As I read this incident, something came to me which I have read several times in Marcus Tullius Cicero's De Oratore.  The story concerns Lucius Marcius Philippus, one of the consuls at the time (91 B.C.) and Lucius Licinius Cassus, a former consul and teacher for whom Cicero had undying respect.  The time is different, the situation is different but there is a connection concerning the protection of dignity and proper protocol.  So here is Cicero's account of the incident (De Oratore III. 2-5):

The Consul, Philippus, was not happy with the Senate's stand on matters before the house.  He was meeting with serious resistance.  The Senate, apparently, adjourned without resolution.  Senators went home.  Philippus, irate,  delivered a speech, laying out his anger and complaints not to the Senate but to the public in a public assembly.  He did not simply criticize the Senate but belittled its standing.

In public assembly Philippus said among other things that he must look elsewhere for an advisory body, for with this Senate he could not carry on the government.  When Crassus heard of the speech, he returned to Rome.  On the morning of September 13, Marcus Livius Drusus, as Tribune, called a meeting of the Senate.  Crassus came, Philippus came and soon the Senate house was stuffed to overflowing.  Drusus listed his complaints about Philippus and then made a motion for a vote concerning the violent attack which Philippus had made publicly against the Senate on the previous day.

Crassus, Cicero reports, was astonished that a Consul, in public, made a vicious attack on the Senate.  Crassus was further angered that a Consul, who ought to be a faithful parent and guardian of the Senate, plundered the cherished dignity of the Senate like some looter. "There must be no surprise", said Crassus, "when this consul has damaged the Republic with his policies, if he should reject the Senate as an advisory body" (since it no longer suits his purpose).

With this, says Cicero, Crassus had enraged Philippus ,a man impetuous, bold and learned, too. Philippus could restrain himself no longer; he  jumped from his Senate seat and commenced to coerce Crassus by seizure of his property, if he failed to relent.  (Such a move by Philippus treated Crassus not as a fellow Senator but as someone to be ordered about.)  The exchange heated up quickly.   At that point Crassus replied that, since he did not view Crassus as a Senator, he denied that he, Philippus, was a Consul. 

"Do you really think, when you regard the Senate as something to be controlled by intimidation,  and in a public assembly you ruin its authority, that I can be intimidated with threats of seizure? If you wish to coerce Crassus, you must not destroy his property; you must rip out his tongue; as a matter of fact although his tongue has been removed, with breath alone my liberty will repel your obscene willfulness. "

It seems that Philippus mocked the standing of the Senate in the wrong setting and in a demeaning way, at least in the opinion of Crassus.  Crassus felt that Philippus had not only done damage to the Senate's ability to have credibility with Roman citizens (and consequently more difficult to perform its duties) but had failed to treat an ancient government body with the respect it deserved in a public setting.

Crassus at the end moved a resolution which declared that the country should be confident that neither the advice nor loyalty of the Senate was lacking.  The motion passed with ease.

Decorum is a complex term but the swift route to the heart of its meaning is that there is a right place and a wrong place to say something and a right time and wrong time. It may be that Chief Justice Roberts was suggesting that  the President express his thoughts in the proper setting and at the proper time without damaging the Court's standing.