Anti-Trump judges sparked a legal crisis – UnHerd
The vice president s remarks came in response to the growing list of lower-court judges who have attempted to halt the new administration s agenda with a slew of injunctions. They have directed Team Trump to release federal grants to nonprofits that the administration has frozen for auditing, for example, and blocked the administration from applying its interpretation of the 14th Amendment, according to which children born to illegal immigrants aren t automatically entitled to US citizenship.
Vance hit back at the judges for trying to restrict the president in his own sphere and overriding his decisions as to how best to carry out the law (the execute in the executive branch ). As the Harvard law professor Adrian Vermeule put it an X post, reshared by Vance, judicial interference with legitimate acts of state, especially the internal functioning of a co-equal branch, is a violation of the separation of powers .
But the judges actions raise another vexing constitutional question: can a lower court with narrow local jurisdiction render so-called nationwide injunctions that purport to bind every American citizen? By seemingly refusing to comply, the Trump administration is effectively answering: no. In doing so, according to The New York Times, the Trumpians have triggered an unprecedented constitutional crisis . In recent years, as legal progressives have sought to limit presidential power when it s held by the other side, it s become a sort of truism that a lower court in Hawaii or, say, New Hampshire can put a stop to a federal policy covering the whole nation.
In fact, the argument isn t obvious at all, and there is good reason to believe that America s Founding Fathers would have been baffled by such gross assertions of judicial hegemony.
via unherd.com
Josh Hammer.