Great Caesar’s Ghost

A “constitutional crisis” is upon us, or so at least warn two of the most senior scribes on the Supreme Court beat — the Times’s and CNN’s sages, Adam Liptak and Joan Biskupic, respectively. Both use this week the alliterative phrase in respect of the conflicts between President Trump and the courts. An op-ed in the Times on Monday warns that the president’s actions threaten to “accelerate a final degeneration into Caesarism.”Has America crossed a Rubicon? Three judges have ruled that his order on birthright citizenship is unconstitutional. Another determined that the administration has defied his order to release billions of dollars in federal grants. A spokesman for Mr. Trump promises that “Each executive order will hold up in court because every action of the Trump-Vance administration is completely lawful” and an “expression of the will of the American people.”Mr. Trump’s clash with black-robed antagonists is hardly new in America’s history. No less a scoundrel than Horace Greeley records — with some embroidery — that President Jackson exclaimed in respect of the chief justice, “Well, John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.” Old Hickory also insisted that it is “as much the duty” of Congress and President “to decide upon the constitutionality” of legislation as “it is of the Supreme Judges.”That showdown foreshadowed a contretemps between President Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney, who would go on to challenge Lincoln’s suspension of the writ of habeas corpus during the Civil War. The Constitution ordains that “the Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” Taney had earlier written the majority decision in Dred Scott v. United States.So incensed was Lincoln by Dred Scott that he stumped on its wrongheadedness and took the occasion of his first inaugural — with Taney there to administer the oath — to venture that every “candid citizen” would have to admit that if “the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court … the people will have ceased to be their own rulers.”Models of defiance rest closer at hand. President Biden was so frustrated by the Nine’s ruling on immunity that he proposed a raft of reforms of dubious constitutionality. Senator Schumer promised that Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh had “released the whirlwind” because of their jurisprudence. Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez urged Mr. Biden to “ignore” a judge’s ruling in respect of the abortion pill mifepristone. It could be that the Trump administration is after bigger constitutional game, and has set itself the task of vindicating executive power. Vice President Vance ventured on X that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” Mr. Vance also shared a post from a professor at Harvard, Adrian Vermeuele, who contends that “Judicial interference with legitimate acts of state … is a violation of the separation of powers.” Mr. Trump appeared to be particularly exercised by a ruling by Judge Paul Engelmayer blocking the Department of Government Efficiency’s access payment processes at the Treasury Department. The 47th president called that ruling “a disgrace.” One of the president’s senior policy advisors, Stephen Miller, mused on X that “If a district court judge wants control over the entire executive branch…he should run for president.”Mr. Liptak sees a constitutional crisis as “a slope, not a switch. It can be cumulative, and once one starts, it can get much worse.” It could also shed new light between the branches of government, and, for that matter, between the people and the parchment. It may be premature to declare a crisis when appeals have hardly been docketed, but it’s not premature to mark that for many, the crisis of confidence commenced long before Mr. Trump was sworn.

Great Caesar’s Ghost

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