The Case of District Judges vs. Trump – WSJ

If the president is the most powerful official in the U.S. government, who is second? The House speaker? Neither he nor any Senate leader can do anything without a majority and agreement from the other chamber, the president or both. The chief justice? He is the administrative and ceremonial chief but only one of nine justices. The vice president? OK, that one is a joke.

A conversation with Judge James C. Ho convinces me that the best answer is the district judge the jurist who presides over trials in federal court. There are 630 of them at the moment, with 43 vacancies, plus hundreds of semiretired senior judges who still hear cases part-time. District judges are unique in our judicial system, Judge Ho says in an interview in his chambers. They are the only members of the federal judiciary that can exercise the judicial power of the United States unilaterally all by themselves without anyone else having to agree with them.

That ability to exercise constitutional power unilaterally exists nowhere else outside the executive branch, so it isn t surprising that district judges cumulatively have proved the heaviest counterweight to Donald Trump s second-term agenda especially given that Presidents Obama and Biden appointed more than half of all active district judges.

via www.wsj.com