One of the most contentious questions to reach the Supreme Court in its current term — whether President Trump can deploy the National Guard in cities where state and local officials don’t want the assistance — is now before the justices:. The law suggests he can. Yet federal district judges at Los Angeles, Portland, Oregon, and Chicago have sought to second-guess Mr. Trump’s decision to call in the troops, while circuit judges have issued mixed rulings.

It’s foreseeable that the Nine would agree with a panel of riders on the Ninth Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals who in June pointed to “longstanding precedent” that federal courts “must be highly deferential” when reviewing the president’s power on this head. They deemed it “likely” that Mr. Trump “lawfully exercised his statutory authority” to call in the Guard if he “is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.”

A separate panel of the Ninth Circuit today agreed with Mr. Trump in a similar case arising at Portland, Oregon, where protesters are attempting to disrupt the president’s efforts to enforce federal immigration laws. On the Seventh Circuit, though, a panel of judges — Ilana Rovner, nominated by President George H.W. Bush; David Hamilton, an Obama nominee; and Amy St. Eve, nominated by Mr. Trump — held that the “facts do not justify” deploying the Guard to Chicago.

The Seventh Circuit panelists seemed sympathetic to the view that “there is no rebellion or danger of rebellion in Illinois” and that Mr. Trump is able “with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.” That aligns with the stance of Governor JB Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson. It’s hard to imagine, though, that the high court’s conservative majority will endorse the notion of federal judges peering over the president’s shoulder on this issue.

These columns base that appraisal in part on the expertise of attorney and constitutional scholar Edwin Vieira Jr. His study of the laws relating to America’s militia system is echoed by the findings of the Ninth Circuit, which held that under Title 10, Section 12406 Mr. Trump can federalize the National Guard as needed to “execute the laws of the United States.” Section 253 of Title 10 offers another legal basis for the president’s actions.

That provision allows the president to deploy “the militia or the armed forces” to “take such measures as he considers necessary to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence,” or “conspiracy.” A president, the law says, can invoke that power if disorder “so hinders the execution of the laws” that members of a community are “deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law.” 

That kind of “specific authorization” in the law, Mr. Vieira averred, overrides any of the nebulous authorities marshaled by Mr. Trump’s political opponents in state and local governments. Feature, say, the Tenth Amendment, which reserves to the states powers not granted in the Constitution to Uncle Sam, or the Posse Comitatus Act, a Reconstruction-era measure that was designed to prevent the federal government from protecting blacks’ civil rights.

Mr. Trump’s solicitor general, John Sauer, is calling for the Nine to step in to clear up the legal morass in the lower courts. The federales, he explains, “are attempting to enforce federal immigration law,” only to be “met with prolonged, coordinated, violent resistance” that “systematically interferes with their ability to enforce federal law.” By our lights this is a case in which the law and the Constitution favor the president’s position.

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This editorial was updated to account for a ruling by a panel of judges on the Ninth Circuit endorsing the president’s deployment of troops at Portland, Oregon.