Do judges have the power to enforce their rulings if the executive branch refuses to comply?
Source photograph by Graeme Sloan / Sipa USA / AP
Since Donald Trump was first elected President, in 2016, scholars of authoritarianism have warned that American democracy is under grave threat. On various occasions, that threat has been defined as a “constitutional crisis,” which generally refers to a branch of government defying or usurping the constitutional powers of another branch. (One certainly would have occurred had Mike Pence refused to certify the 2020 election results.) In recent weeks, a number of law professors have invoked the term to describe the current moment, in which the Trump Administration has fired government employees who have civil-service protections mandated by Congress, tried to end birthright citizenship despite its guarantee by the Constitution, and released an executive order that postpones the enactment of a law passed by Congress about the sale of TikTok.
