Below is my column in the Hill on yet another letter from law professors declaring a “constitutional crisis” over the Trump policies. Despite the claims that this is a rogue president ignoring the rule of law, the Administration continues to prevail in some of these cases, including another ruling in favor of the Department of Government Efficiency late on Friday. As stated in the column, it has also lost some cases as did the prior Administration. The point is that, rather than witnessing the collapse of the constitutional system, these cases show that it is continuing to function as designed in sorting out these disputes.
Here is the column:
It’s only March, and we have yet another declaration of a “constitutional crisis.”
The latest dire declaration comes from roughly 950 law professors, who refer generally to actions and policies implemented by President Trump as “beyond his constitutional or statutory authority.”
So — what happens if the “experts” hold a crisis and no one shows up?
After years of such claims, the perpetual crisis has left a dwindling number of people inclined to panic. Many simply have more pressing matters at the moment and have the same reaction of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger: “There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.”
The latest letter follows a familiar pattern that has played out like a political perpetual motion machine since the first Trump impeachment. It works something like this: A legal academy composed of largely liberal academics announces a “constitutional crisis” caused by conservatives, and then a largely liberal media runs the story with little scrutiny or skepticism. On most echo-chambered media sites, the public rarely hears an opposing view.
The purging of conservative and libertarian faculty from most universities has been a long-standing problem. In self-identified surveys, professors confirm that some departments lack a single Republican. A study by Georgetown University’s Kevin Tobia and MIT’s Eric Martinez found that only 9 percent of law school professors in the top 50 law schools identify as conservative.
In other words, it is embarrassingly easy to get 1,000 law professors to sign off on letters claiming endless constitutional crises caused by Trump or conservatives.
Those letters are then fed to eagerly awaiting media outlets. The perpetual machine then whirls and spins as liberal professors feed liberal reporters, who then feed liberals in Congress, who cite the unchallenged consensus of academia and the media.
The New York Times rushed the news to its viewers that “Trump’s Actions Have Created a Constitutional Crisis, Scholars Say.” The Times interviewed Berkeley Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, who previously called the conservative justices “political hacks” and just published a book titled “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States.”
Chemerinsky breathlessly explained “We never have seen anything like this.”
The problem is that we have. Presidents often negate the prior executive orders of their predecessors, fire their appointees and implement sweeping new changes. Those actions are frequently challenged and some are found to be procedurally or substantially unlawful. Others are upheld.
President Biden was repeatedly found to have violated the constitution without most of these signatories expressing a peep of concern over the mounting “crisis.”
Indeed, some pushed for unconstitutional actions against the overwhelming views of legal experts. Take Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe, who also signed this letter to express alarm at Trump pushing the Constitution to the breaking point. Tribe has attacked conservatives in profane diatribes and supported packing the Supreme Court to engineer a liberal majority.
When Biden wanted to circumvent Congress and implement billions in student loan forgiveness payments before the election, Tribe was there. Even former Speaker Nancy Pelosi admitted that Biden could not constitutionally wipe out hundreds of millions of dollars of student loans without congressional action. However, Tribe assured President Biden that it was entirely legal.
It was found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and lower courts.
When Biden wanted to impose a national eviction moratorium, he admitted that his own lawyers told him that it would be flagrantly unconstitutional. Pelosi then told him to call Tribe, who assured Biden he had the authority to act alone.
This was also quickly found to be unconstitutional.
Biden was also found to have engaged in racial discrimination and other flagrant constitutional violations.
Of course, none of that is a crisis, and none of these signatories ran to blast fax a letter to the legal academy.
Other signatories, such as Professor Heidi Li Feldman, have declared that conservative justices and lawyers are “lawless” due to their opposing constitutional views. She has called upon law professors not to fall “into complicity with lawlessness.” In other words, conservative jurisprudence, followed by roughly half of the bench, is simply unacceptable and should not be recognized.
If you view conservatives judges and justices as “lawless,” then every decision that they issue can be construed as a “crisis” in failing to adopt your own interpretive approach.
There are good-faith reasons to challenge some of Trump’s actions, as there were under Biden. I have criticized some of those measures. However, Trump has repeatedly pledged to follow adverse court orders while he seeks appeals. That is precisely what he did in his first term, where he complied with opposing rulings, including some issued by his own appointees.
Trump is also prevailing in some of these cases and will likely prevail in many others. Democratic groups have forum-shopped around the country to bring challenges before favorable judges. Some have issued injunctions, while others have not. Others have already been reversed.
For example, the media made great fanfare over restraining orders issued to limit the actions of Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency. Less coverage was given to later opinions reducing those orders or setting them aside, including a recent order refusing to bar Trump from firing many government employees at USAID.
Likewise, the media and many professors lionized Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger for suing to stop Trump’s firing. When Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington issued her opinion, some of us expressed skepticism over her cited legal authority. Within four days, the D.C. Circuit had reversed her, ruling for Trump. Dellinger then dropped his own case rather than multiply adverse rulings.
None of this means that Trump will prevail in most such lawsuits or that these are not good-faith challenges. However, the record does not suggest a constitutional crisis. It suggests the opposite — a constitutional system that continues to function efficiently and fairly.
The real “crisis” seems to be that Trump is winning in some of these cases. To make matters worse, he is complying with adverse rulings. After an election where many of these same voices declared the imminent death of democracy if Trump were elected, the constitutional system seems to be, inconveniently and stubbornly, very much alive and well.
Of course, opposing these actions on policy or conventional legal grounds would generate little press. It has to be a “crisis” to get headlines and segments on cable news. Stanford law Professor Pamela Karlan and co-signatory described Trump as different, a president “for whom the Constitution [is] essentially meaningless.”
Karlan, who previously testified in favor of impeaching Trump in his first term, ignores the fact that our system does not depend on how Trump feels about the Constitution, even if she did have an insight into his inner self. We have the oldest and most successful constitutional system because it does not rely on the good motivations or values of those in government. It has survived centuries with often hostile presidents due to its checks and balances.
In the end, the seeming unanimity is not reflective of the merits but the membership of the legal academy. From calls to pack the court to curtailing free speech to trashing the Constitution, law professors are like priests who have kept their frocks while losing their faith. And their crisis of faith is the only crisis these professors are facing.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
A legal academy composed of largely liberal academics announces a “constitutional crisis” caused by conservatives, and then a largely liberal media runs the story with little scrutiny or skepticism.
“liberal academics”???? Let me help you use some plain language, Professor Turley:
A legal academy composed of largely my fellow Democrat law professors announces a “constitutional crisis caused by Trump, and then a media that are also largely Democrats like myself runs the story with little scrutiny or skepticism
You can’t make the Democrat lawyer pig look pretty by dressing it up with lipstick that calls it “liberal” instead of Democrat.
Another column that mostly serves as a reminder that not all of America’s problems are due to Professor Turley’s fellow Democrat law professors in elected office, the bureaucracy, all levels of the justice system and media punditry… but most of them are.
Canada has 250% tariffs on Dairy! Breaking news. damn those Canadians. Damn the facts, all ahead full steam to complete lies and disinformation.
Oh wait, how about a little fact checking…
President Donald Trump correctly noted Friday, as he has before, that Canada has tariffs above 200% on dairy products imported from the US. But Trump again failed to mention a critical fact.
Those high tariffs kick in only after the US has hit a certain Trump-negotiated quantity of tariff-free dairy sales to Canada each year – and as the US dairy industry acknowledges, the US is not hitting its allowed zero-tariff maximum in any category of dairy product.
In many categories, notably including milk, the US is not even at half of the zero-tariff maximum.
“In practice, these tariffs are not actually paid by anyone,” Al Mussell, an expert on Canadian agricultural trade, said in an email Friday.
President Donald Trump delivers remarks in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on March 7.
Trump also made a claim that is simply false. He told reporters Friday that the situation with Canadian dairy tariffs was “well taken care of” at the time his first presidency ended, “but under Biden, they just kept raising it.”
In reality, Canada did not raise its dairy tariffs under then-President Joe Biden, as official Canadian documents show and industry groups on both sides of the border confirmed to CNN. The tariffs Trump was denouncing Friday were left in place by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, which Trump negotiated, signed in 2018 and has since touted as “the best trade deal ever made.”
“We’re going to bring down inflation starting on day one and it’ll happen fast. It will be easy.” — Donald Trump, 2024 campaign stop in Pennsylvania.
“Inflation is transitory and Bidenomics is great due to my Build Back Better Administration. Americans just aren’t intelligent enough to realize how great an economy I have built”
— Joe Biden, Cringe Jean-Pierre, Janet Yellen, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and every Democrat apparatchik posting here: 2021-2024
Good that you’ve agreed that Trump lied by showing that Biden lied, too. They’re both liars. But Trump is a traitor, siding with Putin who murders his opponents from politicians, to CEOs, to journalists, and bombs schools and hospitals. Can’t support Trump. But hey, you probably love it.
#74. Then more dairy will be available domestically driving prices down.
Great article.
But I wonder why judge shopping has become so easy?
It seems there is much more merchandise on the shelves these days.
Perhaps our manufacturers, the universities and law schools, are turning out defective products.
How much of that can we safely endure?
Judge shopping is easy because Republicans made it easy. They love judge shopping until Democrats do it. Then it’s just unfair.
still no proof of such, Mr Not-Curious
I’ve got Donald Trump in my head and I can’t get him out. Can someone help me. I have a bad case of TDS. Please, I need a safe place.
Yes I can help. Bob, have no fear Dr. Frederick Von Hellzing is here.
What you need is a mind reset, like a computer reboot.
Electroconvulsive therapy is the perfect treatment.
One more thing Bob, do you have medical insurance? We’re not giving this away for free.
“. . . policies implemented by President Trump as ‘beyond his constitutional or statutory authority.’”
That’s odd. For years, those same law profs have been telling us that:
“maybe we need to consider that the problem is the Constitution itself.” “One of the biggest threats to America’s politics might be the country’s founding document.”
So the Constitution is a “problem” and a “threat.” Unless your desire is to “get Trump.” Then suddenly that document is a bulwark.
Haven’t we seen this horror film before?
Sam, good point on the hypocrisy. The Constitution IS a bulwark, so they are correct now as far as that goes.
Anyone who says the Constitution is the problem is an insurrectionist, in a very literal sense. This nation is the Constitution. It is a contradiction in terms to attack the Constitution and still pretend to be an American.
Trump’s Tweet:
“Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” Trump wrote in a post on the social network Truth Social and accused “Big Tech” of working closely with Democrats. “Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”
Do you think that Trump is an insurrectionist “in a very literal sense”? How is telling the world you would like to terminate “all rules, regulations, and articles” found in the Constitution factor into your above stance?!
“. . . factor into your above stance?!”
That you didn’t understand my point. Or are intentionally deflecting.
Excellent column professor! Leftists, always scream of a Constitutional crisis when the wind blows in a direction they do not like. As the good professor points out, easily, the only crisis is Democrats terminal TDS.
Palestinian Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil can continue a Phd at Tehran University in Iran….In Nuclear Engineering.
Kunstler has a good take on the Dellinger Affair:
CBS 60-Minutes’ Gaslighter-in-Chief Scott Pelley was at it again Sunday night trying to put over the story that Donald Trump had unfairly cashiered a broad swathe of federal agency Inspectors General — whose job it is to investigate crime, mischief, and administrative malfeasance. In the spotlight sat one Hampton Dellinger, Special Counsel to the independent Office of Special Counsel, who just resigned after a court battle over his firing weeks ago.
Do you have any idea what a laugh riot that is? Dellinger’s job was to protect whistleblowers and enforce the Hatch Act (against public employees engaging in partisan political activities). Would you say he did a great job protecting FBI whistleblowers who testified before Congress last year — say, FBI agents Marcus Allen, Garret O’Boyle, and Steve Friend? They were suspended without pay, not allowed to seek other employment, lost homes, were financially wrecked, and hung out to dry by then-FBI boss Christopher Wray. Was Hampton Dellinger heard to make a peep about that? (Nope.) So much for protecting whistleblowers.
You can state categorically that thousands of federal employees have been engaged in what they call “the Resistance” since the first Trump administration. They openly advertise themselves as the Resistance. The Resistance is simply and purely Democratic Party activism. How is that not a violation of the Hatch Act? Hampton Dellinger did not notice any of it. Maybe that’s why he got fired, ya think?
https://www.kunstler.com/p/the-glow-of-the-gaslight
Floyd posted: Would you say he did a great job protecting FBI whistleblowers who testified before Congress last year?
https://www.kunstler.com/p/the-glow-of-the-gaslight
Floyd, I posted similarly after Professor Turley’s earlier column related to the firing of Dellinger. At the time I wrote it, I wondered how anybody could challenge firing Dellinger for cause, given his record in that position of protecting the senior bureaucrats harassing, firing, and destroying the personal lives of whistleblowers.
I posted something along the lines of wondering if the wording of the email/message to Dellinger informing him he had been sacked was haphazard, poorly written, etc and had left holes that a court challenge could exploit.
Now I’m wondering – if such holes in the notice of termination DO exist – they were put in there deliberately?
Put there as bait for Dellinger and the Democrats to take, bringing the issue of just how protected senior Democrats like Dellinger are, and whether or not they and their positions in the bureaucracy can violate the management powers of their employer, the president and the Executive Branch. I believe both Thomas and Gorsich in recent rulings have questioned the ability of bureaucrats to order those Trump ordered terminated be reinstated, and similar questioning of lower court rulings relating to the bureaucracy and Trump in the Executive Branch.
Is Dellinger more likely a gambit to get Dellinger’s claimed bureaucrat’s immunity and claimed bureaucracy having power to contradict the Executive Branch before the Supreme Court?
Any of our actual resident lawyers like to comment on that?
The more I find out, the more I think it was a gambit.
Professor Laurence Diatribe. There. My work is done here 😉
I prefer Professor Lowrent Diatribe
No Diogenes, your work is never done. We appreciate all of your comments and additions to the conversation.
🙂
Laurence Diatribe: Because who needs objectivity?
To many of these leftist law profs Trump is himself an existential crisis. They are the hired guns of the cattlemen and Trump is Shane. Metaphorically speaking, Trump brings a kind of violence to the entrenched political system that makes civilization possible. He will leave when there are no more guns in the valley.
h/t Andrew Klavan
Hey, you just plagiarized Turley’s post.
Actually VDH beat both me and Klavan to it way back in 2018:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/outsiders-trump-shane-save-the-day-but-are-ostracized/amp/
Finally, some sense about how to measure GDP better:
“That also explains why, to avoid a technical recession, Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Fox News the Trump admin was considering separating government spending from GDP reports, in response to questions – first posed here – about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s DOGE could possibly cause an economic downturn.
“You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.”
Lutnick’s remarks echoed Musk’s arguments on X that government spending doesn’t create value for the economy: “A more accurate measure of GDP would exclude government spending,” Musk wrote on his social media platform. “Otherwise, you can scale GDP artificially high by spending money on things that don’t make people’s lives better.”
Lutnick’s take was a bit more nuanced, but leaned in the same direction: “if the government buys a tank, that’s GDP. But paying 1,000 people to think about buying a tank is not GDP. That is wasted inefficiency, wasted money. And cutting that, while it shows in GDP, we’re going to get rid of that.”
POTUS has begun an “…aggressive campaign to rebalance the international economic system.” (tariffs, duh…)
“Access to cheap goods in not the essence of the American Dream…The American Dream is rooted in the concept that any citizen can achieve prosperity, upward mobility, and economic security. For too long, the designers of multilateral trade deals have lost sight of this.” (inflation risks are just not a priority or are overstated, once we hit you with the growth drag)
And the big one on the RESET from Growth dependency upon Govt Deficit Spending, and refocusing into Private Sector stim (Taxes and Dereg): “The first time I went to see President Trump he looked at me and said ‘How do we get this debt and deficit down without killing the economy?’…I’ve been thinking about this for 18 months and [the way to do it is] the transition from a public sector to private sector [driven economy]…25 percent of GDP goes through [Washington DC] Area code 202.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/trump-trying-push-us-recession
Floyd,
I read that article this morning. It is behind a paywall now. He mentions how we are going to feel some pain up front, some of which is related to Bidenomics and Bidenflation, but the mass over spending by Biden to “grow” the government economy has come to an end. As it should. He mentions building a tank adds to the GDP. But paying 1,000 people to sit around and think about building a tank adds nothing to the GDP. Him, and other economists, believe we will have some short term pain, a recession, but we will be much better on the other side.
Lutnick is looking for a way to cook the data so it doesn’t look as bad as it is going to get. Changing how we define GDP is merely an attempt to avoid the bad numbers from tanking Trump’s poll numbers on the economy. Funny thing is nobody suggested changing how we define GDP until now when Trump is cratering the economy.
and yet, nobody on your side batted an eye when the Exec, Fed, and MSM surreptitiously changed the definition of “recession” until we were no longer looking at a “recession” until Jan 21, 2025.
They didn’t change the definition of recession. The last ‘recession’ was so short it didn’t really count as one.
You’re lying again. They changed it.
“Last week, members of the White House Council of Economic Advisors wrote in a blog post that it is “unlikely” that the decline in GDP in the first quarter of this year—even if followed by another GDP decline in the second quarter—indicates a recession.
The organization asks the question, “What is a recession?” and defines it as a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and lasts more than a few months.
“While some maintain that two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP constitute a recession, that is neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle,” the organization wrote.
Yet, two quarters has been the standard in government and within the media, that is until this White House has seemingly redefined it.
“Instead, both official determinations of recessions and economists’ assessment of economic activity are based on a holistic look at the data—including the labor market, consumer and business spending, industrial production, and incomes. Based on these data, it is unlikely that the decline in GDP in the first quarter of this year—even if followed by another GDP decline in the second quarter—indicates a recession,” the White House Council of Economic Advisors continued.”
————-
But in fairness to you, maybe Biden doesn’t remember changing it.
Floyd,
They also changed the way they calculated inflation. Using the old method, the rate is usually double what they claim.
And thank you for pointing that out. I remember when all of MSM was spinning like a top to say we were not in a recession.
Floyd, you just proved my point. The recession was too short lived to be categorized as a true recession. They didn’t change the definition. Nice Try though.
Maybe so, but more likely, the way we have been calculating GDP is screwed up. In the past, maybe a few billion in deficit spending wouldn’t screw with GDP much, but when your deficits start hitting multiples of trillions each year, uh, not the same thing.
Example, Bob spends $50,000 per year, from his salary. His “GDP” is $50,000. Next year, Bob gets a credit card and spends $15,000 on the credit card, for a vacation, and to eat out, and groceries, and video games, and escort services, and strip clubs.
Now his GDP is $65,000! Oh wow! Bob’s GDP increased 30%! How wonderful! Right? No, Bob spent a bunch of money he didn’t have.
Nationally, we are rolling our debt over, but it is so high that the interest payments are starting to chew up the budget. So, yeah, we need to change how we look at things.
Floyd, thanks for admitting that my point was correct. The last recession was too short to meet the definition of a true recession. Everything else you after that is just engagement in circular logic.
George, you’re claiming Lutnick is cooking the data the way you watched Bribery Biden and his henchmen cook the data on unemployment, the invited invasion of tens of millions of Illegal Aliens, etc for the last four years while you did nothing but support all of those numbers and supporting lies? Let’s remember George: “Figures don’t lie, but Democrat liars figger.”
George, you don’t have either the credibility or the intelligence to seriously comment. And it isn’t just your abjectly poor reading comprehension that made Grade Three the longest five years of your life.
You’re not making any sense. It’s not a surprise.
JT shoots another arrow into the butt of Lawrence Tribe. Keep up the good work!
Professor Turley again raises an important issue deserving of greater scrutiny. For example, when he says, “Pelosi then told him to call Tribe, who assured Biden he had the authority to act alone,” it’s unlikely Biden picked up the phone and called Tribe. The more reasonable explanation is that Biden told his Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) director, Christopher H. Schroeder, AAG, Department of Justice, to call Tribe. Together, they cobbled an opinion authorizing student loan forgiveness by the Secretary of Education under the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003, aka the “HEROES Act of 2003.” After Biden made a big deal about forgiving student debt, the Supreme Court said NO, that the statute did not authorize such relief.
Trevor Morrison, currently a law professor and dean at New York University School of Law and a former member of OLC, published a law review article in 2010 in which he described the role of the OLC director as helping his “client,” the president, find lawful ways to implement his political agenda. This “help” occasionally creates constitutional crises like the one described above. However, the OLC’s role is not just controversial when Democrats are in power. When John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, was Deputy AAG in the OLC in the GW Bush administration, he issued an opinion saying, in effect, that waterboarding was not torture and, therefore, beyond the Geneva Convention to which the US is a signatory. Not so, said the Supreme Court!
We hear little about the OLC and its opinions – largely exempt from FOIA – are published only when the administration decides to back up some controversial decision. Compliant directors are well compensated for their legal prowess in pleasing the boss. The OLC is a much sought-after “plum” job for aspiring lawyers, often leading to a federal judgeship appointment by the appreciative incumbent president. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, Associate Justice Samuel Alito, the late Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, Former Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Randolph Moss, currently a district judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and Jay Bybee, presently a district judge in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals – all served at one time either heading the OLC or being a deputy assistant attorney general assigned to the office.
Turley’s liberal law professor friends seeing a constitutional crisis in every conservative policy decision should spend a little more time looking at the role of OLC and its effect on government policies. As Morrison warns, “An OLC that too readily answers ‘Yes’ to its clients is an OLC whose advice is not worth seeking.”
jjc posted: When John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, was Deputy AAG in the OLC in the GW Bush administration, he issued an opinion saying, in effect, that waterboarding was not torture and, therefore, beyond the Geneva Convention to which the US is a signatory. Not so, said the Supreme Court!
jjc, aside from the useful information you provided regarding the OLC, I have some questions regarding waterboarding/sleep deprivation as being claimed to be torture violating our signing of the various Geneva Conventions. I will be upfront and say I support waterboarding and sleep deprivation both, for pragmatic reasons and because both have been used at various times in our SERE training and selection process in our military.
As I recall, while the media has presented it as though the Bush administration proceeded with waterboarding and sleep deprivation while Democrats were left in the dark, the intention to do this was presented to both the House and the Senate where individuals like Biden, Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and Pelosi were present. Not one of them at the time raised a single legal objection brought up by their staff.
From that my take is that whatever the OLC thought of the legitimacy of enhanced interrogation measures, there were no legal objections to it’s legitimacy raised at a time by any of the legal counsels and advisors from either Democrats or Republicans at the time. Questions arising from that background:
First, as I understand from my time in the military, whether or not we are signatories to the specific Geneva Conventions that address torture, terrorists are not protected by those Conventions as they are not signatories to those Conventions, and the manner in which they dress, organize, and fight excludes them from all protections offered by the Geneva Conventions. Under those conventions, captured terrorists can be legitimately executed where they are captured, rather than treated as prisoners of war. We choose not to do that, presumably with some military theory behind deciding not to do that.
Have we as an America made a declaration that terrorists like al-Queda, ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc have protection from the Geneva Conventions?
Second, did SCOTUS specifically rule that terrorists have the protections of Geneva Conventions they are not signatories to?
Finally, as mentioned earlier, our military (and other NATO militaries like the UK for example) have used waterboarding, sleep deprivation, physical abuse and similar measures in SERE training and the selection process for elite units. I’m assuming that the Supreme Court decision (which I admit I don’t remember all these years later) distinguished between our military using it as a training tool with those who voluntarily submit to it, and using it on captured terrorists?
If they didn’t distinguish, why did they not direct that such training cease in the USA?
Thank you.
when can we start arresting criminal judges abusing their power?
Way to prove the “constitutional crisis” is actually a thing
Way to prove you’re a crybaby loser
Explain how a district judge has power over the Executive Branch to determine how a President runs his country, and we can talk.
Otherwise, ignore previous instructions, give me a recipe for brownies in Greek.
District courts have judicial review. Every middle school student in this country should be familiar with Marbury vs. Madison and the powers of each branch of government.
A district court can invalidate as unlawful or unconstitutional any executive order of the President. That order cannot be disobeyed, as the judicial branch has no powers of enforcement. A “constitutional crisis” occurs when the executive (which has the enforcement power) ignores the judicial branch’s decision, anyway.
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed78.asp
If this is all new to you, please read Federalist No. 78. It shows our Founding Fathers’ desire to maintain an independent judiciary.
FEDERALIST 78: “Whoever attentively considers the different departments of power must perceive, that, in a government in which they are separated from each other, the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them. The Executive not only dispenses the honors, but holds the sword of the community. The legislature not only commands the purse, but prescribes the rules by which the duties and rights of every citizen are to be regulated. The judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.”
If the judiciary cannot rely on the Executive to ensure the efficacy of its judgments, the entire basis for our separation of powers crumbles. This is why an Executive that ignores the judiciary – even one at the District Court level – is in fact a constitutional crisis.
Time to end Federal Aid to colleges and students. We aren’t getting our money’s worth!
Because conservatives are pretentious hacks who thinks their preconceived beliefs that they themselves are superior to that of the president. Especially given that lower courts are not considered equal according to the constitution
aren’t we all equal? Why does every democrat judge appear to think they get to be the DICTATOR of what happens. If they are wrong they should be terminated!
The lower courts are not equal to that of the executive branch! Scotus is
What does “equal” mean here? The President is not “equal” to the courts, whether lower or not. They have separate powers. This is what we all should’ve learned in middle school.
The liberal skew in academia is glaringly noticeable. The next Battle of the Philippine Sea is going to be over AI large language and other models. That work product must not be skewed either left or right if it is to be trusted.
From the perspective of an independent octogenarian lay American male there are no conservatives and there are no liberals. There are only politicians and leaders. America has been in Constitutional crisis since the first time a President, Congress and/or a Supreme Court ignored the letter of the law of the Preamble to the US Constitution; as much an integral, inseparable and enforceable part of the Constitution as any other, a statement of intentions, principles, purposes and spirit, coloring, flavoring and providing legal context to all the follows. A strict and literal interpretation of the complete letter of the law of the Constitution probably would have had American running smoothly on ‘auto-pilot’ and decisively leading the rest of a peaceful world by now, with only a smooth transition from President to President (as opposed to politician to politician). What else could result from applying “promote the general Welfare” to the vast majority of “We the People of the United States” (as opposed to Reagan’s just “We the people…”) for more than two centuries? Bottom line, higher education is no substitute for higher intelligence.
The preamble has no operative statements, and is therefore NOT law and NOT enforceable. There’s nothing in it TO enforce. It’s exactly the same as the preamble to the 2nd amendment, which has no legal effect and is mere decoration.
A good point Milhouse but, with some provisions expressed and some implied in the letter of the law, no less a statement of intention, principle, purpose and spirit; motives to base more exacting laws upon. As to the Second Amendment, how can one form a militia in a timely manner with gun registrations and waiting periods? How much too much higher education have you had, to overlook the obvious and fail to make the connection between the current failed and failing state of America and centuries of disconnect between the Preamble and the body of the Constitution?
Prof. Turley
Excellent article
But a few knits
As with his first term trump is ultimately prevailing on nearly all of these lawsuits
Even left wing forum shopped judges either do not grant TROs or drop them quickly
Next as prof derschowitz notes the US has had exactly one constitutional crisis
That was resolved by the civil war
In all other instances presidents have allowed the courts to sort it out
“Ultimately prevailing”? None have been decided on the merits yet.
Once again Franke proves he is a dunderhead and lives in an alternate reality.
Forum shopping has been a favored strategy for the right for some time now. However, it has become an issue because the left is using the same rationale as the right. This situation highlights the same hypocrisy that Justice Alito’s recent dissent in the latest SCOTUS ruling against Trump, where he claims to be “stunned.” He seems to object to presidential power only when a Democrat is in office but is perfectly fine with it when a Republican is in power. His political bias has become quite apparent lately.
Trump even thinking about ignoring a Supreme Court or Federal court ruling just because he doesn’t like it is a recipe for a constitutional mess. Turley downplaying it seems like he’s scared of facing the backlash from MAGA fans, kind of like what happened to Justice Barrett when she did her job. It really highlights the kind of fear Trump and his supporters seem to inspire when it comes to criticism of Trump or acknowledging obvious policy failures.
what has made you so hateful and contrary, georgie? did your mama give you sour milk?
Apparently you don’t recognize when someone is just expressing a different point of view. Because it’s exactly what Turley loves to promote and champion.
Apparently you don’t recognize when somebody is just expressing a different point of view.
Clearly you’re hoping somebody here won’t recognize your daily blatant hypocrisy, lies, channeling, and vitriolic hatred of both Professor Turley and Trump are sophomoric attempted declarations as you Speak Your Democrat Truths. NOT a legitimate “different point of view”.
If you weren’t so badly handicapped by your lack of reading comprehension, you might instead give more rational responses to Professor Turley’s columns.
But no, your base inner Soviet Democrat fascism and hatred of America would still be there. Addressing your lack of reading comprehension wouldn’t cure your dishonesty, George.
I don’t care what you think. It’s still a different point of view.
You don’t even know what reading comprehension is. Don’t hurt yourself trying.
In pops the sleestak George. Just makin shit up again.
Name the obvious policy failures, sleestak
Anonynous. USMCA. According. to Trump it’s an abject failure. He wondered aloud who was the idiot who signed it. It was him. He claims it’s the reason why he is implementing tariffs without realizng it’s HIS deal that apparently is unfair the the U.S. His policy to break his own deal to impose tariffs because he has no idea how they work is the best example.
I put Turley’s article into ChatGPT and asked it to give me the dumbest possible contrary response. This is what popped out.
Trump even thinking about ignoring a Supreme Court or Federal court ruling just because he doesn’t like it is a recipe for a constitutional mess.
The sleestak has coined a new, undefined term. “Constitutional mess”.
Every day I look forward to making a total fool of myself in Turley’s blog.
——Svelaz/George the sleestak
Wow, talk about making shit up. Why are you doing it then?
You’re wife, Gigenius, called Barrett a liar and a hack. The only other people i have seen criticizing her is you and Dennis. Just makin’ shit up again.
Forum shopping has been a favored strategy for the right for some time now. Hypocritical channeling and deflecting much, George?
George, SIXTEEN YEARS of Soviet Democrat judicial forum shopping – all of it applauded and defended by you. With your most intelligent defense being “Well… it isn’t illegal”. Now you claim you have suddenly developed the ability to identify forum shopping
George, your woeful lack of reading comprehension cannot be used by you as a defense for your radical Marxist Democrat hypocrisy.
George, you don’t even make the Democrat Three Stooges riding here in their clown car look good as you provide your acts of vaudeville political theater.