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The judiciary doesn't have any formal mechanism to enforce a ruling upon the executive branch other than by tradition and precedent. If he makes unlawful, unconstitutional orders, Congress has reason to impeach him. But if Congress doesn't want to impeach him, then he gets away with it. It really is that simple. What do you want the judiciary to do? Send in the US Marshals, start a civil war?
Now perhaps there's a constitutional argument to go against whatever the president is doing. Certainly you could make a case for anything. But the vesting clause is very clear that the President is endowed with the full powers of the office. The Supreme Court will not suddenly make a ruling that will formalize any sort of control on the executive branch.
Do you have an argument to bring to bear against the unitary executive? How is the presidency supposed to work? Is there a strong legal theory behind the ability of fifty state judges to have a veto over the President?
Can't the judiciary hold members of the Treasury in contempt for not unfreezing the funds?
They could. But then Trump could instruct the DoJ not to enforce that ruling.
You see, without the rule of law and trust in institutions, all judges are is old people in unfashionable black robes. They're not wizards. If the judiciary is percieved (and acts) in a partisan way, then the other branches of government can hit back. The people shouting about checks and balances are unhappy it's being used on them.
All of this line-pushing is designed to go to the Supreme Court. It's clear from the Trump Administration's intent that they will no longer tolerate the judiciary getting in the way of their agenda with legalese. They don't regard them as a neutral institution enforcing the rule of law, but one colonized by its enemies.
I predict that the Supreme Court will give way to Trump to preserve its own legitimacy, as the court did to FDR to prevent him from stuffing it with his appointees.
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I’m confused. You said if the President goes against the Constitution, then he should be removed. He has clearly violated the Constitution. Therefore he should be removed.
The presidency works by following the proper channels of checks and balances, not spamming Executive Orders until the courts block it. I have a very hard time believing that if a Democratic president did the same behavior you would have the same reaction.
There is general agreement on this, but the question is who decides when this happens. According to the Constitution, the answer has been "Congress." As such, attempts to force this result by the judiciary are in this tradition inappropriate.
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Spamming executive orders until the courts block it has been how presidential admins work since Obama lost his supermajority. Biden blatantly ignored the court orders blocking him from student loan forgiveness and eviction freezes and nobody thought it was a constitutional crisis.
Biden in fact attempted to get student loan forgiveness placed wholly outside the ability of the courts to review by arranging so nobody would have standing. The response of the Democrats was to be angry at the Republican's almost-as-tenuous methods of obtaining standing anyway.
Probably the closest we came to a crisis was Biden's extension of the rent moratorium after the Supreme Court's deciding vote (Kavanaugh) said basically "It's unconstitutional but we'll let you wind it down".
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Popular presidents ignore the constitution all the time. Unless you're arguing that FDR's internment of Japanese-Americans was constitutional. The Biden administration made clear its intent to ignore the constitution when it was searching for a way to make good on its promise to make a handout to the college educated. It's unclear as to the executive branch auditing itself and controlling its staffing is unconstitutional: the Trump administration should ignore the lower courts until a clarifying ruling comes down from the Supreme Court.
The institution which interprets the US constitution, and has the final say on its meaning is the Supreme Court. It famously okayed the camps in Korematsu so from its issuing the matter was no longer in dispute. But in 2018 Hawaii case, USSC repudiated it.
So the camps were constitutional, as affirned in Korematsu, from their inception until 2018.
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