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US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Trump orders

theguardian.com

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Re: US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Trump orders

#211

Post by timr »

ceejayoz wrote: post #134
timr wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Of course there isn't. There's no written rule that the boss's son is gonna get the cushy VP slot, but everyone knows it. Where was SCOTUS when https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_O%27Connor issued all his nationwide injunctions?

Well, that's very cynical and maybe you'll be right, but for now the California AG agrees with me. Per a quote in the WSJ [1]:

> California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a co-plaintiff, looked for a silver lining: Red states, which sought universal injunctions to stymie Biden administration policies, would encounter obstacles pursuing that strategy under a future Democratic president, he said.

Call me a crazy, glass-half-full centrist, but I prefer to look at this as a clawing back of extremely broad powers from rather partisan judges. It's been maddening that circuit court judges in a few hyper-partisan districts basically push every decision to the Supreme Court.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/scotus-birthright-citizenshi...

Re: US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Trump orders

#212

Post by pjc50 »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #185
throwaway48476 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The three branch system allows any two to gang up on the third. Parliamentary systems don't have any checks like this and trend towards unitary authoritarians.

No. The three branch system allows any two to gang up legally against the third. But, as we are seeing, all the actual power relies with the executive. They can simply ignore the actions of the other two.

What actually happened is that all four branches were held by Republicans, so none of them is going to hold any of the others accountable.

Re: US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Trump orders

#213

Post by ReptileMan »

jfengel wrote: post #87
hakunin wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this often gets confused. Voting a president in doesn't give them a blank mandate to do whatever they want, such as break the law. And knowingly doing things that might not get approved by courts, but veiling it in a "novel legal theory" disguise is still breaking the law. Just because slow and thorough processes need to take place to adjudicate these actions doesn't mean that these actions aren't worth adjud…

According to the Supreme Court, that's exactly what it does. The President simply isn't accountable. I would not have thought that this is what the Constitution says, but the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of what the Constitution says. That's not in the Constitution, either, but they've appropriated that job for two centuries, so we let them get away with it. The "it's not illegal if the President does it" part…

>According to the Supreme Court, that's exactly what it does. The President simply isn't accountable.

The president absolutely is accountable. The problem is the Congress for their own reasons refuse to hold it to account. The Congress could remove any president in less than 24 hours with simple majority for no reason whatsoever.

Re: US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Trump orders

#214

Post by magicalist »

Amezarak wrote: post #193
paulvnickerson wrote: post #127

This had to happen. The state of affairs prior to this ruling is that any of 700 district judges could unilaterally block the president from exercising his authority under the constitution pending a review, including matters of national security, based on their own subjective politics. It broke the proper functioning of the government. This restores a proper functioning balance of powers.

It's astonishing how many people fail to address the legal argument in the SCOTUS opinion, disregard the legal question altogether, and apparently want the courts to decide how things "should" be, regardless of legality. IANAL but I read SCOTUS opinions regularly and this one is hard to argue with. If things should be different then we need legislative/constitutional changes.

> If things should be different then we need legislative/constitutional changes

lol, yes, like birthright citizenship written plainly into the constitution.

What good are your further legislative/constitutional changes worth if the executive can just ignore them except for the single individuals who file suit?

Re: US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Trump orders

#215

Post by Amezarak »

magicalist wrote: post #201
Amezarak wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The debate is over what "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" means, it's misleading to simply announce it's guaranteed - the whole legal argument is over whether it is guaranteed.

> it's misleading to simply announce it's guaranteed. Let's not pretend all assertions are equally worth entertaining. Maybe it's "misleading" if you're Stephen Miller, but every court case where it's ever been heard and the legislative record at the time of adopting the 14th amendment show that citizenship is guaranteed. The Trump administration hasn't even raised it in appeals!

The author of the clause didn't think it applied to the children of aliens, so it doesn't seem crazy to me.

> Howard said that the clause "is simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already, that every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States."[30] He added that citizenship "will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons"[30]—a comment which would later raise questions as to whether Congress had originally intended that U.S.-born children of foreign parents were to be included as citizens.[32]

Re: US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Trump orders

#216

Post by firesteelrain »

vkou wrote: post #147
paulvnickerson wrote: post #127

This had to happen. The state of affairs prior to this ruling is that any of 700 district judges could unilaterally block the president from exercising his authority under the constitution pending a review, including matters of national security, based on their own subjective politics. It broke the proper functioning of the government. This restores a proper functioning balance of powers.

The state of affairs is that: 1. The executive is doing something illegal to hundreds of thousands of people. 2. Dozens and hundreds of people sue them. 3. The executive loses in court. 4. The executive does not appeal to the supreme court the cases it lost. 5. Thus, no binding precedent that stops the illegal action in #1 is set. This is actual lawless lunacy, and this enshrines it as SOP going forward. Is this the…

I get the concern, but this ruling doesn’t stop courts from checking illegal executive action. It just says injunctions should only apply to the actual parties in the case.

Nationwide injunctions were never clearly authorized by statute, and letting any one of 700 district judges block a federal policy everywhere created chaos and forum shopping.

If a policy is truly unconstitutional, the proper path is a class action or taking it up to the Supreme Court

Not giving individual judges a veto over national law.

Re: US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Trump orders

#217

Post by drdeca »

throwaway48476 wrote: post #69
axus wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm worried about the trend of civil rights going unprotected until after a Supreme Court ruling.

That's what laws are for. Courts aren't supposed to write them.

You do kind of need courts to rule that something in fact violated a law.

Re: US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Trump orders

#218

Post by ceejayoz »

timr wrote: post #211
ceejayoz wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course there isn't. There's no written rule that the boss's son is gonna get the cushy VP slot, but everyone knows it. Where was SCOTUS when https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_O%27Connor issued all his nationwide injunctions?

Well, that's very cynical and maybe you'll be right, but for now the California AG agrees with me. Per a quote in the WSJ [1]: > California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a co-plaintiff, looked for a silver lining: Red states, which sought universal injunctions to stymie Biden administration policies, would encounter obstacles pursuing that strategy under a future Democratic president, he said. Call me a crazy, glass-ha…

> California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a co-plaintiff, looked for a silver lining…

Sure, and Susan Collins thinks Trump "learned his lesson" with his first impeachment. Looking for the silver lining is what we sometimes call "cope". He lost. As a politician, he's obliged to put some spin on it.

> It's been rather maddening that circuit court judges basically push every decision to the Supreme Court.

It is. This sort of thing should've died before ever becoming an EO, and at every level of the judiciary as clearly unconstitutional. That it didn't is a big problem.

Re: US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Trump orders

#219

Post by indil »

acoustics wrote: post #149
paulvnickerson wrote: post #127

This had to happen. The state of affairs prior to this ruling is that any of 700 district judges could unilaterally block the president from exercising his authority under the constitution pending a review, including matters of national security, based on their own subjective politics. It broke the proper functioning of the government. This restores a proper functioning balance of powers.

In this case, the president does not have the authority under the constitution to purport to invalidate the citizenship of natural-born citizens. It is the executive that broke the proper functioning of the government.

Your news sources have woefully misinformed you. Trump's argument is that it's not enough to be born here, you have to also be a charge of the country:

"Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

Note the "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof". Trump's argument is that people born in America to tourist parents here for a few weeks (for example) aren't subject to the jurisdiction of America. It's a valid argument to make, even if you come down on a different side. Even the author of the 14th amendment said that was the point of that clause. Even in logical terms it makes sense: You can't just let anyone in to give birth and then collect benefits; it's unsustainable.

However, this case wasn't about citizenship. It was about the broader issue of lower courts issuing restraining orders outside their jurisdictions. It's a recipe for chaos. There's a reason why there are multiple jurisdictions, and courts are limited to their jurisdictions. What happens when two lower courts issue conflicting nationwide orders? The only court in the US that has jurisdiction over the entire country is the Supreme Court. This was a losing battle.

There's a right way and a wrong way to go about addressing problems. Court cases are sometimes more about the core issues involved than the concrete circumstances. Sure, birthright citizenship was the reason for the suit, but the core issue was judicial overreach. Don't get mad because the way your side was "winning" was by cheating, and they were stopped. Try having an actual good argument, and doing things the right way by arguing the actual case in a court.

Re: US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Trump orders

#220

Post by raincom »

jonstewart wrote: post #186
paulvnickerson wrote: post #127

This had to happen. The state of affairs prior to this ruling is that any of 700 district judges could unilaterally block the president from exercising his authority under the constitution pending a review, including matters of national security, based on their own subjective politics. It broke the proper functioning of the government. This restores a proper functioning balance of powers.

Judges have never been able to make rulings based on their own subjective politics. They must justify their rulings under the law. I could extend some merit to the idea that injunctions should be limited in complex cases where case law is thin and the law is less than clear. When executive orders are clearly unconstitutional, however, I do not then see any reason for limits.

Judges make use of reasonableness, superset of rationality, all the time. The issue is what is reasonable to 30% is not reasonable to another 25%. As long as there is a political backing for their reasonable decisions, they are fine. One can call it subjective or political. That’s why judges do judge and provide good reasons that can be defendable by 20% of those who vote and have political sway.
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