George Liebmann reasonably points out some of the problems with nationwide injunctions issued by federal district court judges that halted some of the actions taken by President Donald Trump, often effected through executive orders and without congressional approval (“Nationwide injunctions should have been nullified long ago,” July 3). The ability of district courts to issue nationwide injunctions was recently severely limited by the Supreme Court. Liebmann’s article, however, omits important arguments that go against the points he makes.
For example, Liebmann writes that liberals were not as concerned about excessive claims of judicial authority when judges invalidated conservative state laws. While that is true, he might have mentioned that we don’t hear conservatives complaining about an imperial presidency now as they often did when Joe Biden or Barack Obama were president. In politics, consistency and principle, more than ever, yield to political considerations.
Much of Liebmann’s article attacks courts for taking actions that are undemocratic, in that they do not support the will of the people. Trump won, so courts should get out of his way is the point. But American courts have long been viewed as anti-democratic in that, unlike Congress or the president, their role is not to further the will of the majority but to restrain it when that will leads to actions that violate constitutional protections. Decisions by the Supreme Court that invalidated legal actions against burners of the American flag, those who refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in schools and even
the court-ordered desegregation of schools were unpopular, but showed the court acting for just that purpose.
It should not be forgotten that the actual injunction in this case was to prevent the executive from ignoring the birthright citizenship clause in the Fourteenth Amendment. This attempt to abandon hundreds of years of history and precedent was based on the dubious claim that birthright citizens were not subject to the laws of the United States, meaning that if a birthright citizen murdered someone, he could not be prosecuted here.
There must be some balance between the authority of the president and that of the courts. The actions of President Trump have wrongfully skewed that balance.
— Steven Grossman, Baltimore
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