The Revolt of the Judges

[TygrBright]

What Happens When the Judiciary Doesn’t Trust the President’s Oath

Source: LawFare

>>"To put the matter bluntly: why are so many judges being so aggressive here?

The legal disputes are both interesting and important. But this meta-legal question strikes us, at least, as far more important and far-reaching. And we think the answer lies in judicial suspicion of Trump’s oath. The question goes to the manner in which we can expect the judiciary to interact with President Trump on this and other issues throughout his presidency. It goes, not to put too fine a point on it, to the question of whether the judiciary means to actually treat Trump as a real president or, conversely, as some kind of accident—a person who somehow ended up in the office but is not quite the President of the United States in the sense that we would previously have recognized.

***

But also there is a third possibility, and we should be candid about it: Perhaps everything Blackman and Margulies and Bybee are saying is right as a matter of law in the regular order, but there’s an unexpressed legal principle functionally at work here: That President Trump is a crazy person whose oath of office large numbers of judges simply don’t trust and to whom, therefore, a whole lot of normal rules of judicial conduct do not apply.

***

We suspect there is a lot of truth to this. The question is whether that decoupling of the presidency from the person of the president, which we anticipated in our original essay on the oath, is quite as indefensible as Blackman assumes—or whether it’s an inevitable consequence of vesting someone as volatile and fundamentally disingenuous as Trump with “the Executive Power” of the United States of America."

Quite a fascinating discussion on judicial points of view and possible strategies by Benjamine Wittes and Quinta Jurecic.

The only thing that rubs me the wrong way is yet another weasel-spined writer substituting the euphemistic "disingenuous" for the simpler and more truthful "dishonest."

But the whole piece, while long and a bit dense with legal terminology and references, is very much worth reading, since the judiciary increasingly seems to be the Last Barricade of Democracy in America.

interestedly,
Bright

[Warpy]

1. What's really going on here is that

Dolt45 really did think the government is exactly like a corporation and that he could disparage anyone who didn't agree with him and then fire them all if they didn't play things his way. He's now finding out there are actually only a few hundred people he can hire or fire and most of them are not in the judicial branch or in Congress.

The idea that a CEO isn't in full command of all branches of government is a deep shock to him and he still doesn't quite believe it.

It's the sort of thing that will eventually convince him that government is utterly unmanageable and he'll step down because compromise and negotiation and cooperation are all foreign words to him.

He is going to be a hell of a lot of fun to watch. Of course, fools will still buy the propaganda line that government should be run like a business, but the constitution still guarantees that it won't. Thank you, founding fathers.

[TygrBright]

2. From your keyboard to the Divine Monitor! n/t

[Kimchijeon]

3. thank goodness for the constitution

and hence them bitchin' about how they wanna redo it etc, whine whine whine. lol