Judges are getting fed up ...
John Williams
The other day, the DOJ fessed up that the administration has violated court orders over 50 times in New Jersey alone. Understandably, judges are getting fed up. For example, yesterday a judge in Colorado ordered the DOJ to explain itself:
“These things shouldn’t be that difficult,” Senior U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson told Trump administration lawyers in a remote hearing on a preliminary injunction they are apparently not complying with.
“The policy of (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) was a good policy and all they have to do is comply with their own policies, and we’re good. But, for whatever reason, they insisted on not agreeing to that … and here we are sitting here today. I don’t get that.”
And another judge in California began an order yesterday with this quotation:
“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” The Federalist No. 47, at 324 (James Madison) (J. Cooke ed.1961)
She did not lighten up in the order, as shown by these bits:
One might assume that four separate orders issued by a federal district court interpreting a federal statute would make clear that enforcing executive policies premised on a contrary legal interpretation is improper. Remarkably, that has not been the case.
…
Respondents have far crossed the boundaries of constitutional conduct.6 Somehow, even after the judicial declaration of law that the DHS was misguided in its act of legal interpretation that nullified portions of a congressionally enacted statute, Respondents still insist they can continue their campaign of illegal action. The shameless submission that is Respondents’ Opposition deliberately seeks to erode any semblance of separation of powers. [See Dkt. No. 110, “Opposition” or “Opp.”].
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Ordinarily, the Court would not state basic principles of law to avoid pontification. Yet separation of powers concerns is at the heart of this case, this Court’s exercise of authority, and this country’s foundational principles imbued in the Constitution. Respondents appear to have little regard for such fundamental tenets; thus, a brief lesson in legal history is apt. …
Judges are fed up; we should be, too.