Dick the Butcher in Henry VI, part II, act IV, Scene II, Line 73 explains the necessary first step to seizing power illegally.
Mr. Rosen, Mr. Donoghue and Mr. Pak — all Republicans — testified that Mr. Trump was not seeking their legal advice, but strong-arming them to violate their oaths of office, undermine the results of the election and subvert the Constitution.
What stopped him? Two things: 1) Lawyers with a basic core of ethics that required fidelity to bedrock democratic values; and 2) the general incompetence of the plotters (cf. events of Jan 6, 2020).
I believe this has important implications for how we teach law students. More discussion of (or paeans to?) the values of the rule of law in a democratic society may be in order. At least until the Supreme Court makes ashes of it in our mouths, at which point…what?…Edward Luttwak?
Required note for the overly literal: Luttwak’s book, written in the guise of a how-to, is actually a scholarly analysis of how coups happen.
One must also remember the context of the Shakespearean quotation: It’s from the mouth of a proponent of tyranny/usurpation, seeking to hamstring the opposition in advance. And the point there is that it’s complicated, not unambiguous.