The text of the Constitution offering no mechanism for courts to enforce their own orders might have felt irrelevant last decade, but today, with Donald Trump explicitly acting against court orders in the case of the Venezuelan immigrant deportation, these problems feel more pertinent than ever. I would love your perspective on how this vagueness is contributing to the political and legal environment we're living in today.
Trump’s resistance in the Venezuelan deportation case exposes how much the system depends on norms rather than rules. Presidents used to comply because it was the right thing to do; that's no longer the case.
And with that, we have (1) increased polarization - Court decisions are viewed as political moves rather than neutral rulings, making it easier for leaders to claim defiance is justified. (2) institutional weakness - If the public sees that court orders can be ignored without consequence, judicial authority looks fragile, undermining the perception of the courts as coequal branches of government. (3) constitutional uncertainty - each clash between the President and the courts becomes a political fight rather than a legal one, fueling instability and distrust in government.
Interesting! I'd love to know more about this reliance on norms-- is this a feature or a bug in the constitution? Did the framers simply have an overwhelming trust in the American public, or was this an intentional choice?
The reliance on norms is very much an intentional feature. The framers designed a system that assumes each branch will exercise self-restraint rather than pushing its powers to the extreme. They didn’t want a hyper-detailed enforcement mechanism for every scenario because they feared that would invite more rigidity and potential abuse.
They also assumed leaders would be motivated by reputation and public accountability: defying a court order would be politically costly because citizens valued the rule of law. That trust was, in some ways, optimistic. It worked as long as leaders feared reputational harm, but when politics becomes polarized enough that defiance is rewarded rather than punished, the system’s reliance on norms feels like a weakness rather than a strength.
The text of the Constitution offering no mechanism for courts to enforce their own orders might have felt irrelevant last decade, but today, with Donald Trump explicitly acting against court orders in the case of the Venezuelan immigrant deportation, these problems feel more pertinent than ever. I would love your perspective on how this vagueness is contributing to the political and legal environment we're living in today.
Trump’s resistance in the Venezuelan deportation case exposes how much the system depends on norms rather than rules. Presidents used to comply because it was the right thing to do; that's no longer the case.
And with that, we have (1) increased polarization - Court decisions are viewed as political moves rather than neutral rulings, making it easier for leaders to claim defiance is justified. (2) institutional weakness - If the public sees that court orders can be ignored without consequence, judicial authority looks fragile, undermining the perception of the courts as coequal branches of government. (3) constitutional uncertainty - each clash between the President and the courts becomes a political fight rather than a legal one, fueling instability and distrust in government.
Interesting! I'd love to know more about this reliance on norms-- is this a feature or a bug in the constitution? Did the framers simply have an overwhelming trust in the American public, or was this an intentional choice?
The reliance on norms is very much an intentional feature. The framers designed a system that assumes each branch will exercise self-restraint rather than pushing its powers to the extreme. They didn’t want a hyper-detailed enforcement mechanism for every scenario because they feared that would invite more rigidity and potential abuse.
They also assumed leaders would be motivated by reputation and public accountability: defying a court order would be politically costly because citizens valued the rule of law. That trust was, in some ways, optimistic. It worked as long as leaders feared reputational harm, but when politics becomes polarized enough that defiance is rewarded rather than punished, the system’s reliance on norms feels like a weakness rather than a strength.