by Jonathan Turley at Res ips loquitur — The thing itself speaks
This week, the Supreme Court continued to deliberate over what to do with the growing number of national or universal injunctions issued by federal district courts against the Trump Administration.
The court has long failed to address the problem, and what I have called “chronic injunctivitis” is now raging across the court system. Justices have only worsened the condition with conflicting and at times incomprehensible opinions.
Both Democratic and Republican presidents have long argued that federal judges are out of control in issuing national injunctions that freeze the entire executive branch for years on a given policy. For presidents, you have to effectively sweep the district courts 677-to-0 if you want to be able to carry out controversial measures. Any one judge can halt the entire government.
Under President Barack Obama, Justice Elena Kagan expressed outrage over the injunctions in public comments at Northwestern University School of Law. Kagan lashed out at the obvious “forum shopping” by then conservative advocates to get before favorable courts, insisting “It just cannot be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stopped for the years it takes to go through the normal [appellate] process.”
In his first term,…
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