I think she’s absolutely right. While simply ignoring court orders he believes improper is a response open to the Executive — and a legitimate one in extreme cases — it’s a last resort, and without a huge record it’s likely to play badly with important constituencies.
It’s true, of course, that in the landmark case of Marbury v. Madison, Chief Justice Marshall was moved to extreme cleverness by President Jefferson’s explicit and public threat to disobey a court order to turn over Marbury’s commission, but the courts were much weaker politically then than they are now. Though if things continue in this fashion much longer, that may no longer be true. Which is another reason for Trump to play it mildly so far.
Trump is working overtime to restore the rule of law.
Trump is acting to restore the law from the depredations of lawless, indeed un-constitutional, arrangements whereby the core powers of the presidency and of Congress are undermined by unaccountable bureaucrats.
Second, he is acting to rescue the executive powers of the presidency from the un-Constitutional interference of district court judges. It is the latter that has focused everyone’s attention these last weeks as various judges have issued orders to say that the President of the United States may not fire people who work for him, that he must spend money controlled by agencies of the executive branch, and that he may not deport certain illegal aliens. Here I remind my readers of the first sentence of Article II of the Constitution: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”
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